Dominic Lawson has the Olympic Games' measure:

It is in his non-sporting justifications that Coe, who had always seemed to me a very level-headed person, gets completely hyper-oxygenated. He warns that "many east Londoners live an average of seven years less than residents of Westminster", implying in some way that the urban regeneration associated with the Olympics will add years to the lives of the residents of the Greenwich Peninsula. "The new sports venues for the games", apparently, will help "to tackle serious lifestyle-related conditions such as childhood obesity, heart disease and diabetes".

In other words, those of us who cavil at this extravaganza are kiddie-killers. Are we to be allowed to point out in our defence that a much greater amount of urban regeneration, or indeed sports facilities, would be affordable by the state if billions were not being paid to finance two and a half weeks of running and jumping? Sorry, we should not forget such fascinating events as women's weightlifting, synchronised swimming, equestrian dressage and beach volleyball.

I bore my friends telling them how I have not the slightest idea how I will vote at the next election. By then it will be too late, of course, but if there was an election tomorrow and a party existed promising to do nothing but rip up the contracts with the IOC to stage this obscenely expensive spectacle and then call a fresh election to be fought on the 'real' issues, I would be certain to vote for it.

How I wish instead that there was some way of personally bankrupting the likes of Tessa Jowell and her fellow Olympic cheerleaders. One day, when the final cost is known, their names will be mud, and the sheer wilful waste of their vainglorious project will resonate for generations to come.