Olympic Luxury

From a Telegraph leader:

"Oddly...the promoters of the [2012 Olympics] prefer to make their case in financial terms. The London Games, they say, will regenerate the East End and bring much-needed infrastructure to the capital. Like most arguments based on incidental benefits, this one doesn't really work. If London needs a particular railway connection, it should build one, rather than building an Olympic village and tacking a line on to it. And it would be more efficient to hand out wads of notes in Stratford than to spend it on facilities for IOC grandees...the facilities left over from the 2004 Athens games are already shuttered and decrepit. But most Athenians take the view that a dent in the national budget is a price worth paying for their moment of patriotism."

Discuss?