When so-called football supporters began throwing coins inside the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday, and one of those coins landed smack-dab in a baby’s mouth – present partly because she is her father’s progeny, but also because she longed for a precious glimpse of the arena that housed Olympic heroes from before she was born – and when the baby, the coin now in her tummy, subsequently started to sprout, the whole affair was more than a shameful and sometimes bloody disgrace.
Because amid the rush of bruised and battered bodies, as the coin flourished and turned the fledgeling infant into a money tree instead, all the accumulation of tuppence ha’penny went to show is that we’ll never pay off this gross monstrosity, so we might as well let the thugs have their way.
From an original estimate of £280 million, today the cost of the Olympic Stadium stands at more than £700 million, most of which has come at the taxpayers’ expense. After the price tag for a completed venue spiralled like an unsteady discus tosser ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympics, £272 million has since been spent alone on the stadium’s renovation, allowing it to be used as a football stadium by East London club West Ham.
The tenancy process which found in favour of West Ham proved controversial, and was cancelled altogether once, before concluding with a deal that sees the Hammers blowing bubbles in the face of rest of the country. Their annual rent for using the stadium was belatedly revealed as £2.5 million per year, but the club managed to negotiate its way around funding police, stewarding, heating and lighting, turnstile operators, and pitch maintenance.
Poor sight-lines, a lack of segregation between supporters of opposing teams both within the makeshift stadium and without, and an unsatisfactory police radio system have conspired to make West Ham’s new home a sordid place for any football spectacle, but the club’s scurrilous owners didn’t care about that. The pornographers David Sullivan and David Gold, abetted by their small-screen starlet underling Karren Brady, were all too eager to uproot Irons supporters to snatch an exorbitant stadium almost for free.
Certainly it was a case of the few holding the rest in bondage, when – as though intent on providing the taxpayer with some sort of refund – a small but spendthrift section of the West Ham support spent much of Wednesday’s cup match against Chelsea chucking not only coins, but also bottles and seats. The club is promising beefed-up security measures in order to prevent a repeat of horrific scenes, which saw reporters scurrying and pushing and shoving in order to find someone, please anyone with a few abrasions and a trickle of blood.
