London is eating us

At the risk of sounding like a loony from a phone in:

Not a lot to do with food, but plenty to do with there being life outside London. I just heard another of those "if we MPs were not serving in Parliament we would all be earning millions and in charge of everything else" idiocies. I have met several MPs, and one stood out as highly capable, though his politics and mine differed. Another was the missing link between homo sapiens and toothbrushes. In twenty years in industry I never saw job descriptions where must-have qualities included the ability to avoid questions, stab colleagues in the back, laugh falsely and provide detailed excuses for almost every project they undertake failing. Ex-MPs are employable because of their contacts far more than what they now seem to perceive as superhuman abilities.

The BBC has been given a kicking today for not featuring life outside England, for which read London. Not the biggest surprise ever reported. I still grind my teeth when thinking of a BBC Radio 5 discussion when an MP went unchallenged when saying that the idea of the National Stadium being built in Birmingham was out "because it is too far away." The rest of the panel was I think composed of London-based figures. I remain convinced that plans to relocate some of BBC Radio to Manchester will be watered down because it is too far away, nay, further still.

London is swallowing the rest of the UK. The Olympics will benefit everyone to a certain extent perhaps, but it is London's infrastructure which will be improved, London which will have the legacy of superb sporting facilities, and for about three years before the games it will be the rest of us who can't get an electrician, plumber or bricklayer. And we have to listen to Sebastian Coe.

The BBC will have a jamboree with the Games, so cutbacks in projects outside London which a little imagination could see as linked to the need for cash for the Games will not feature too prominently.

As a lover of irony I enjoyed various politicians recently explaining that everything was ok with the Olympic budget now, and there had only been one period of error. Admittedly the error was several billion pounds, but what the hell, it's for London. And I also enjoyed the fact that the authorities forgot the VAT. Obviously they were not expecting to pay cash and avoid it, but the thought is still pleasing.