LONDON--When something like the Olympics comes to your town, you can almost hear the b.s. whistling in the air. All the politicians and business wheeler-dealers start gushing about how good the undertaking will be for the community, the "infrastructure" ( favorite word), the reputation of the city, and (even more favorite word) the "economy."
Little people, little dreams take cover. The grandiose and the bloviated are on stage. And, oh yes, the liars, connivers and profiteers.
In London the obfuscating began seven years ago when the IOC awarded the city the 2012 Games. Future promises mean nothing when you're knocking down buildings, destroying neighborhoods--no--in the name of progress to come. Maybe that should be in caps, so worshipped is it. PROGRESS.
Everything will be richer, faster, higher.
Little people? Who? Lost in the dust storm.
"What rubbish!" Olympic neighborhood apartment owner Warren Lubin told the Evening Standard of the intrusions and lies made to or upon all the people, including himself, who were or will be dispossessed: "Go back four years, remember Beijing and how LOCOG said they would never destroy people's houses the way they did in China to make way for the Olympics. Well, it has happened here, just in a different way--stealth."
But stealth works, you know. When big concepts are afloat, and the politicians and connected are at the trough, just about anything does.