Indirect Taxation and Olympics etc

6 years ago when we were all supposed to "Back the Bid" for the 2012 Olympics, we were told it was a no-brainer. Despite the fact that most of the population were somewhere between indifferent and anti-Olympic hosting, we won the bid and committed to spending 10 billion to build all the infrastructure (although surprise, surprise, the initial figure was much lower!).
We were told that it would not only bring a good feeling but would bring much needed investment into sports and the areas that would be used. The stupid thing was, this "investment" was our tax pounds! So the Olympics didn't bring any investment it was just a ploy for the government to spend more money and pretend they were supporting the country.
Anyway, today I realised another subtle economic issue which has avoided the headlines. We could be convinced that all the money brought in by foreign visitors goes to "the country" and this injection of money is good for the country but the truth is this money does not go to "the country" it goes to a handful of companies that are involved in the Olympics and actually costs money to the rest of us who are not involved in any way, it is indirect taxation, it is moving money from all taxpayers into the hands of a few people. Nice. Again, this wouldn't be the end of the world since you could argue overall that society would benefit by foreign money but another trick has been missed. This money that has been spent is not our money, it is BORROWED from foreign banks and countries. This means that not only do we have to pay this money back to the foreign country, but we also have to pay back massive amounts of interest on top of it. This would be perhaps ok if we didn't have much national debt and could pay it back in a year but the government is riddled with debts and massive interest payments (£132M per day!) so how much will this £10 billion end up costing us if it takes 10 years to pay back? Another £1 billion? More? How does that compare to the amount that foreign visitors will bring in when they visit the Olympics? Is it still worth it?
No, probably not, but it was the way for the government to find support in our hard-working and under-valued athletes and abuse their energies and popularity to draw attention away from a sloppy Labour government who didn't have the money to back the bid in the first place.
As always, we were the ones at fault because we were sucked into the hype and didn't consider the results before all the hundreds of people started waving banners saying, "Back the Bid". Shame on us.