Olympic spirit's flame dying out

AND so ends the Olympic Games, based on an ancient and honourable Greek tradition. A time for the world to come together to watch athletes and sportsmen and women showcase physical endeavour and prowess. Nations burst with pride at every medal won through dedication, training and stamina and competed for on a level playing field.

Now let's forget the hype and the idealism and recognise that this years games were a massive, worldwide, cynical PR coup for China's ruling Communist government.

The idea was that by giving the games to China, their horrible, all-controlling regime would be opened to the rest of the world and influenced for the better. In fact, after an initial flurry of curiosity and mild rebuke, China seems to have been viewed with rose-coloured myopia rather than placed under any sort of microscope. BBC coverage positively oozed sycophancy and sickening flattery.

We know that homes which were in the way of Olympic developments in Beijing were simply demolished, their inhabitants left destitute with no compensation. We know that a little girl with the voice of an angel was dumped from the opening ceremony because she wasn't pretty enough. We know that some of the televised effects in the ceremony were computer generated – a cheat. And investigations are now under way over apparent evidence that the home country's athletes' ages were doctored to allow them to qualify. . . another cheat.

Promises that worldwide web access would be opened up failed to materialise and China continues with its government-controlled internet to ensure its people never get to know what the rest of the world really thinks.

All this done in the name of the Olympics, which in my view brings the very ethos of the Games into disrepute. The regime has been bolstered beyond measure. Indeed, it doesn't much matter to the Chinese authorities what anyone else thinks because they have everything sewn up so tightly their people believe they are the toast of the world. And that's priceless to a government which craves blind acceptance and fears revolution more than anything else.

None of that detracts from the efforts of the athletes. Chris Hoy's medals were as honestly earned in Beijing as they would have been in London. But the very spirit of the Olympic Games has been shattered.

At least China, the new economic super power, managed to get in before the worldwide credit crunch. We are the patsies who now have to pick up the baton in the midst of a recession as our own economy goes down the toilet.

We will never know how much China paid to stage the Games. We know in the past, the costs have ranged from £3 billion to £7bn and that we are looking at a modest estimate of £9bn, which is certain to soar. We simply can't afford it.

Already its estimated that £675 million which would have gone to grass roots sport in Britain has been siphoned off to the 2012 London extravaganza.

And lets have no spurious arguments about how much revenue the Games will generate. The simple answer is, not enough, albeit that some seedy parts of the metropolis might look better for a few years afterwards.

The Olympics are now so costly, so greedy, that winning them is a booby prize, a poisoned chalice. It's time we realised that no country should want that burden and that the Olympics might actually be better if they scaled down and got back in touch with their core raison d'être.

They should be about sporting excellence, not the lavishness of the opening ceremony or the deluxe venues. We could do without never-ending new fringe events such as beach volleyball, wind-surfing, BMX biking and marathon swimming.

And if the Olympics stands for anything it should be fairness and human rights, which should preclude some countries from playing host no matter how much money they can fling at it.

A sickening attitude
THE Scottish Ambulance Service has been forced to apologise after one of their controllers refused to send an ambulance to a Lothians motocross event where a teenage rider had sustained serious head and neck injuries and was bleeding from the mouth.

The female controller, a shift manager no less, refused because a private medical firm was providing first-response cover at the event. She insisted the ambulance was for NHS use and the fact that a private firm was involved at the motocross disqualified anyone injured there from assistance.

Was she trying to make a political point? Did she not for one moment realise the idiocy of the position she was taking? I hope there's more than an apology. A long, hard look at the selection process for controllers and a demotion for the shift manager involved is the least we should expect from the ambulance service.