Headline, March15, 2013

'''MAN UP FOR : OLYMPICS - MAN UP

FOR : !WOW!'''

In the beginning almost everyone agreed that it would be terrible idea for London to host the 2012 Olympic Games. In 2002, with the next year's 2012 bid-headline looming, the United Kingdom's minister for culture , media and sport, Tessa Jowell, received a one page memo and from an aide who argued strongly against it.

If London lost the country would be Humiliated!! Paris, which had lost its last two bids to host the Games, was favored to win for 2012. But if London was to win, the costs would outweigh the benefits and divert funding from other priorities.

But Jowell was coming off a happy summer. She had helped coordinate the Commonwealth Games also the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Both were so successful that when she got this advice, she thought, ''Hmmm, I am not sure that we are going to say that we can't bid to host the Olympics. Look what we've just done.''

She arranged a series of one-to-one meetings with the other 22 members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Cabinet. They were, she recalled, ''profoundly skeptical and hostile,'' and indeed unanimous in their opposition. They feared a repeat of the swelling budgets and poor management that turned the building of the Millennium Dome into a public-relations fiasco. When she hired the economists to conduct a full scale feasibility study, they too shot her down.

With a relatively modest budget estimate for the Games of £ 2.4 billion, which was to be drawn not from the national treasury but from the National Lottery and London's council taxpayers  -Joinet,ll had enough leverage to persuade the majority of the Cabinet to give the go ahead. To be sure, there was a worry that the budget estimate was a complete fantasy. Prime Minister himself remained hesitant.

 Jowell figured that face to face with PM Tony Blair was her best chance. All the way to No : 10 Downing Street, she rehearsed her arguments I his ''Memoirs'' Blair recalls that Jowell lectured him to Man up:

''I really didn't think that was your attitude to leadership. I thought you were prepared to take a risk. And it is a big risk. Of course we may not win but at least we will have had the courage to try.'' When Tessa says this, you feel a complete wimp and rather ashamed.

You know she is manipulating you, but you also know its a successful manipulation.''

And this is how Jowell recalled the exchange, ''He looked at with his lilac eyes and he said   -it was an absolute turning point-  he said,'' I see what you mean. O.K....darling, I'll think about it, and I'll let you know.'' And the very next day he said,

''We'll go for it.''

And I must add that Given the concerns about the cost and the project's uncertain economic returns, it's hard to understand exactly why Blair said yes to Jowell. Some have suggested a cynical motive: that Blair saw the London 2012 bid as bread and circuses, holding out the prospect of national-pick-me-up after the country's controversial involvement in Iraq.

Respectful dedication to ''London Bobbies'' and all the Students, and Professors of England,

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless