http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19539090

The Olympics also relied heavily on unpaid volunteers who were fed chocolate and McDonalds. I rather fear that the Tories will take that as the guiding principle.

So the TUC is suggesting we run the economy by spending much more money than we have in the budget?
Sounds about right for a left wing union to suggest.

Actually, from the interviews on the radio this morning, that's not what they are suggesting at all no. What they seemed to be suggesting is that we look what made our olympic teams successful and how they managed to optimise performance for a given budget.

So pretty much the opposite of what you were suggesting, really.

I have no ideas of the true figures, but wouldn't a host nation for the Olympics throw as much money as possible in preparation for a good medal performance?

Since both money and the "economy" are human inventions and are completely arbitrary, there is literally no reason why the world couldn't enjoy a decent standard of living beyond lack of political will and the vested interests of the rich.

You can throw as much money at a sport as you like, it doesn't mean you'll definitely win. England's football team and the LTA prove that on a pretty much daily basis. It improves your chances obviously but its still not a given. So when we've produced lots of teams that have won things, including some who have had very limited budgets and some who were up against other teams that had at least as big a budget - for example, our cyclists are very well funded, but so are those of France, Australia, the USA and China - it makes sense to look at them and see what the differentiators were that made them winners and the others not, yes? Aside from the sheer chance factor which you can never entirely remove from the equation.

I read that as though the TUC were referencing the PM's 'cut public spending and the private sector will pick up the slack' scheme that has failed so spectacularly.

Requiring the public's money to be spent efficiently is one of those things that all governments say that nobody can ever really disagree with, like 'reducing child poverty'. Thing is, the current mob have set themselves various targets, told everyone that the austerity measures were worth it to achieve those targets and then pretty much failed to hit any of the targets they set in the first place.

Basically, the government is the anti-olympics.

And if they failed to deliver their funding gets cut, is that what he wants?

Hideously over the original budget, the only target they hit was getting it completed on time.

now that is a bit of common sense that all can agree on

is he including himself in that "us" or is it the usual Union figure whereby everything they advocate doesnt actually affect them adversly, only their members.

The HE sector (the one I'm in) already worked on the basis of performance related funding, even before it was basically turned into a private sector business (which it now pretty much is). I suspect pretty much all the public sector would accept that deal if they could hold the government to it, given it's better than hitting your target and getting your funding cut anyway because the government has given hundreds of billions of pounds to private sector businesses who miserably failed to hit theirs, which is what has happened this time round.


Going massively over budget is hardly the exclusive preserve of the public sector though now is it?


Again, its the kind of things politicians say comfortable in the knowledge that nobody could sensibly object to it but it doesn't pin them down to actually promising to do anything.


Trade Union leaders are at the end of the day politicians, with all the faults that breed contains.

Jon