It is often suggested that this stitch up s a price we in Wales (And Scotland and Northern Ireland) should willingly pay for the dividend the London Olympics Legacy will give us.
But a recent report in the Scotsman has shown that this is Hogwash.
A cording to the Scotsman..
....the Olympic Games' flagship "legacy" programme, which will pump £135 million into grassroots sports facilities and coaching initiatives over the next four years, will focus solely on England.
Some £150m of Scottish National Lottery money will be ploughed into the Olympics, but no equivalent legacy project has been put forward for Scotland – or the other devolved nations, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The lottery funding handed out to Scotland as part of a separate legacy initiative for the Commonwealth Games in 2014 is 24 times less than the amount of cash England stands to receive as part of the Places People Play programme unveiled by Games chairman Lord Coe last yearA similar story can be told in Wales.
Last year the Daily Post revealed just 0.01% of the money from top-level Tier One contracts – the bigger contracts – were awarded to 10 companies in Wales.
One of them was won by Williamson Technical Services of Conwy, for “specialist site engineering services” at the Olympic Stadium.
This was compared to 759 contracts awarded in London, 233 in the South East and 60 in the West Midlands. Having missed out on the bigger contracts, Welsh companies were expecting to get some of the Tier Two and Three or sub-contracted work shared out by the larger companies.
But Plaid Cymru MP Hywel Williams says he’s found out there are no guarantees they will get anything.
Arfon MP Mr Williams said Olympics Delivery Authority’s (ODA) claims that the allocation of contracts was “fair” across the UK was complete “nonsense”.Mr Williams found no information was held centrally by the ODA about the Tiers Two and Three contracts.Mr Williams said
....the Olympics contracts had overwhelmingly been given to companies in the south east of England.
Mr Williams said: “They said we should not worry and that Wales would benefit from the Tier Two and Three subcontracts. But now I have discovered that records for Tier Two and Three contract allocations are not available .Theis was in December and since then its got even worse according to James Corrigan in todays Independent on Sunday.
Announced with predictable pomp last year by Lord Coe (title: Locog chairman, salary: £360,000 pa, plus £500-£1,000 for every meeting he attends), the Places People Play initiative will pump £135m into grassroots sports over the next four years. Now, overlooking for the moment that the Comprehensive Spending Review cut £160m from school sport and that some of the funding will be used to protect sports fields which shouldn't be sold anyway, the £135m will be much welcomed. In England.
Not in Scotland, or Wales or Northern Ireland, which have all been forced to contribute heavily to staging the Games, but shan't receive a penny of the PPP funding. And their youngsters will not be able to enter the programme's free ballot for Olympic tickets either. So much for the "British" Olympics, so much for the legacy. In truth, £135m is peanuts anyway and it will not begin to address the shortfall in funding caused by the redirection of monies into the staging of this big fat myth.
Where is the Labour Welsh Government on this . Not only do they almost to a Man and Woman fail to back our FA in their stand against the BOA and the English FA they seem to have accepted the fact that Welsh sport i being ripped off as money is diverted to London and all we have to show for it is a Football Match at the Millennium Stadium and (Whoope some Teams setting up Training camps.
It time Carwyn Jones in particular denounced what James Corrigan calls a Big fat Myth and speak up for the Welsh FA and the rest of Welsh Sport,
1 comment:
The London games , I think that says enough not the British games or even the English games the rich mans London games.
I doubt very much i will be watching it and if the ticket sales the way they were sold are anything to go by look out.
Post a Comment