From just my own experience in the past couple of days on the tube and cycling around London, I think TfL have massively over-egged the potential for travel chaos and as a result, businesses are suffering. Empty restaurants in Chelsea on a Sunday at lunch time? The city is absolutely dead with none of the normal queues for lunch.
If I was a Black Cab driver, a restauranteur or even a shop owner, I would be crying. Just a prediction, there will be no boost to the UK economy from the Olympics, other than the money spent by the government on it, and we'll have more negative growth.
To those who say that TfL were dammed if they didn't, that is no excuse for what they have done. The economy is at stake and they selfishly covered their own arses at its expense. They basically said "stay away from London" and people have quite rightly taken them at their word. This was wrong. We coped with massive tube disruption after 7/7. Right, rant on behalf of London's service industry over.
Tags for Forum Posts: london2012, olympics, tfl
Lots of journalists are starting to pick up on this now too. Complete and utter shambles. Unless of course the government were lying to us about the impact on the economy of the Jubilee weekend. The FTSE finally noticed today, curse me, I should have sold it yesterday when I said I would.
Thanks, Pam, for posting the link to to the BBC video clip.
But why is this discussion turning into Olympics good/ Olympics bad? Benjamin Franklin's "Blame-all and Praise-all". Ain't this town big enough for both of us!
Surely the trick was getting the balance right. And so the mistake made was to scramble for slices of the Olympic cake. With some places ending up with crumbs. Instead of realising that there are millions of people whose enthusiasms extend beyond sport. Just as not everyone is interested in royalty.
If the pace of central London really has slowed with crowds thinning out, and if hiked-up hotel prices are dropping a bit, doesn't this become quite a good time to visit? So the London Tourist organisations should get the message out - immediately. Open for business and it's not just the Olympics
Though it won't be quite like Ireland's Escape The Madness campaign with this clever video.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
It's too late Alan. People made other plans. This is what the sudden realisation that we should have done something about man made climate change will be like.
Not too late if you help pass on the news today, John. Tell your kith and kin immediately and change the sheets on the spare bed! (Though sadly it's always too late for Claire Kober to learn anything.)
I've invited some rich rellies on FB who seem to be in NY at the moment but it all still seems a bit late. We're going to have to do something drastic here. In the middle ages we would have captured some of these visiting dignitaries and ransomed them off...
This is now well and truly picked up by the mainstream media. I saw that the ES picked it up tonight and here it is in the Guardian. TOO LATE. Either the government were lying about the impact of the Jubilee weekend on GDP and we're stuffed or they were telling the truth and we're stuffed.
This is not moaning Birdy, this is the economy, hitting the bottom a third time. Disaster. Stop paying your mortgages if it's to a bank (ask for a holiday) they're about to go under.
Chicken Licken.
Right on John McMullan. Osborne and Cameron's gang has ruined the British economy, and now along come Seb and the Olympic Mafia to make it worse. "Olympic legacy"? That will be us paying off the debts for the Olympic white elephants for decades. Never mind, eh, it's going to put Seb on the international sports gravy train for the rest of his life. He's laughing all the way to the bank (that will be one in an off-shore tax haven) and we're all in the unemployment lines.
Christopher, the gigantic bank bailout, that continues to depress the economy, happened in 2008. The Olympics haven't just "now along come"; the games were sought and awarded in 2005 (July 6, day before the London bombings).
True, but under the former government, the economy was growing. It is the austerity measures of the current government that have tipped us back into recession. As for the Olympics, when I said they had "come along", I meant the event itself, rather than the lengthy preamble to it. Now the Olympic "games" are actually taking place, they seem to be having a depressing effect on the central London (retail) economy, by putting people off (because of fears of transport chaos) from shopping there, or going to restaurants, cinemas etc. However, the economic effects will be much clearer by the end of the calendar year. And in the years to come, it will be much clearer what the "legacy" will be; whether, as Cameron claims, a huge boost to the economy, or, as the experience of other host cities suggests, no economic boost and a long time spent paying off the debts, whilst saddled with a lot of white elephant venues that can't be used economically.
Plenty travel chaos today. That should be good for the FTSE 100.
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