With these wasters out of the country, anyone thinking what I'm thinking?
How the public is spending £7million on Beijing Olympic staff - Telegraph
BBC: 437 staff. Cost £3million.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport: Tessa Jowell, Andy Burnham, Gerry Sutcliffe and 10 staff. Cost: £75,000
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform: Lord (Digby) Jones and four staff. Cost: £28,200
Downing Street: Prime Minister and 20 staff. Cost: £114,500 (estimated)
Foreign Office: Sir Alan Collins, consul general to New York. Cost: £3,000 (estimated)
Home Office: 5 officials. Cost: £12,000 (estimated)
Mayor of London's office: Boris Johnson and 13 staff. Cost: £167,000
Olympic Delivery Authority: 22 staff. Cost: £25,000
Olympic Security Directorate: 30 people. Cost: £30,000
Transport for London: 11 staff. Cost £35,000
Hackney Council: 5 staff. Cost: £30,000
Greenwich Council: 6 staff. Cost: £14,000
Newham Council: 4 staff. Cost: £9,000
London Development Agency: 13 staff. Cost: £3million
Visit Britain: 7 people. Cost: £50,000
Visit London: 2 people. Cost £5,000 (estimated)
Metropolitan Police Service: 39 policemen and support staff. Cost: £240,000
Dorset Police: 4 people. Cost: £9,000 (estimated)
Total: 639 people, cost £6,846,700
Dorset Police? Boris should have just sent a Fed-ex courier to pick up the flag and everyone else could have watched it on Sky, if they could be bothered.
Comments
To paraphrase Desmond Tutu, Boris stopped the Ken Livingstone gravy train just long enough to jump on himself.
Posted by: DocBud | August 7, 2008 7:18 AM
I've just done a bit of number crunching on those figures and it's revealled some very interesting things. Here's just a couple:
To avoid obvious distortion I took out the LDA cost as they are clearly taking the piss at 3 mill for 13 staff (or maybe they are the only agency telling the truth). Then I examined the numbers.
Firstly: Nearly every organisation that admits to providing an estimate (80%) are estimating the cost per person way below the average (41% to be exact) which kind of demonstrates the competence of the state to "estimate" cost.
Secondly: There is a marked differences between the cost per person for different organisations doing the same thing. Take the three borough councils for instance. Hackney's cost per person is 6,000 (not far from the average) but Greenwich and Newnham put their costs at just over 2,000. Methinks someone has got something very wrong; unless of course someone is telling massive porkies.
The cost estimates of Dorset Plod and the Met exhibit similar huge variances.
Posted by: The Remittance Man | August 7, 2008 9:00 AM
Well they fiddled the estimates for the "London Olympics" as well as everything else they touched, why should they be honest this time? Expecting a bit much aren't you!
Posted by: Derek W. Buxton | August 7, 2008 2:19 PM
Time for a few pinches of salt.
Find me first or business class tickets New York to Beijing return and a swanky hotel for a few days with only £3k in the budget; the Foreign Office figure can't be done, say I.
Olympic Delivery Office / Security Directorate: £55k for 52 staff; can't be done, say I.
Looks like most of these figures are the first estimate. Dangerous things, governmental first estimates - remember Wembley stadium and the early 2012 estimates?
Double the total then add the cost of booze, tarts and rent boys, you might be close.
Posted by: FatBigot | August 8, 2008 1:41 PM