Boris goes for gold

Whether or not you think London will turn a profit from hosting the Olympics, the biggest winner of all may turn out to be Boris Johnson, says Adam Jourdan.

"The time for carping is over!" That's the war cry of supporters of the London 2012 Olympic Games, says Sam Leith in London's Evening Standard. And it's true that the Danny Boyle-directed opening ceremony was "fabulous" and almost universally praised.

But that doesn't change the fact that we're spending "a giant bunch of public money" on "littering the capital with white elephants" and "creating a two-tier system in the public roadways". There wasn't even a hint of anyone "resigning when the initial quote £2.4bn went up by a factor of three-and-a-bit. In effect, £9.3bn has been stolen from the public purse at a time of "dire national up-the-creekness".

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Adam Jourdan

Adam is a former journalist at MoneyWeek, writing about global economies, equities, politics and general news stories for print magazine and online. Since then, Adam has worked at Thomson Reuters for more than 10 years, starting off as a graduate trainee and worked up to Bureau Chief, South Latin America. He also has experience leading teams of reporters in China.