London's Chance to Shine

It has been seven years and hundreds of millions of pounds in the making, and now – finally – the time has come for London to play host to the biggest event on the global sporting calendar.

Seventeen official days of competition lie ahead, at the end of which half the world will breathe a sigh of relief, while the other half suffer withdrawal symptoms. This shared experience typifies the unity that makes the Olympic Games so significant, so memorable, and so special.

But not only is it billed as the greatest show on earth, it is also one of the juiciest stories – especially when things go wrong – and while for some cities, such as Beijing, staging the Games represents an opportunity to show the world its best face, for others the pressure is on to maintain an established global reputation; few cities fit this bill quite like London does.

Yesterday’s Korean flag gaffe was hardly a great start, then. Commercial posters bearing Arab-language welcome messages printed backwards will titillate some and disappoint others.

Last-minute worries about security caused by the deplorable failure of the world’s largest security company, G4S, both to hire enough staff and then to ensure that those they did employ turned up to work, didn’t exactly inspire much confidence either. (G4S should, surely will, and has already begun to pay a heavy price for such incompetence.)

But these flaws must be seen in the contexts both of the scale of the undertaking in hosting a 21st-century Olympics, and of recent host cities’ predicaments at the same stage of the process.

Four years ago, it was all about the Beijing smog – an inevitable and intractable consequence of China’s rapid industrialisation. In 2004, the focus was on the failure of Athens organisers to complete the construction of the venues in time (the aquatic centre was even left without a roof because there wasn’t enough time to build one). Events during the Games allowed China to proclaim a huge success, but left Greece with few positives to show for its legacy of debt.

Legacy – the buzzword of these Games and London’s successful bid to host them. Unlike last time, when the emphasis was on new-world scale and spectacle, or the time before, when the Olympics returned to their spiritual home, the theme of the 30th Olympiad is a new approach to the celebration of sport based on sustainability.

That’s why the Olympic Stadium has been built to a cutting-edge design that allows it to be partly deconstructed and substantially scaled down after the Games, in order to provide a sustainable home for British athletics. The location of the Olympic Park is symbolic; the use of existing, well-known venues for many of the minor sports and the upgrading of public transport systems both allow the organisers to restrain costs and reduce the environmental impact.

All of this will form nothing more than a distant backdrop, however, over the coming fortnight. A memorable opening ceremony, large and enthusiastic crowds at all of the main events, and an array of thrilling sporting action – not to mention success for the host nation – are what constitute a successful Games in the minds of organisers, athletes and fans alike.

And this year, fans are being catered for like never before. The London Olympics have been described as the biggest media event in history, with tens of thousands of journalists descending on the city to deliver the action to a global audience via newspapers, television and social media. A rich-world Games in the age of the iPhone will also mean unprecedented use of mobile technology to follow and share the action.

And what action there promises to be – from the athletics track to the velodrome via the road, the rowing lake, the swimming pool and the high seas, hopes for home-grown glory are high… perhaps too high.

But this summer has already delivered two fantastic stories of British sporting endeavour both against the odds and in spite of history. The Sage is hoping there are many more to come.

A Bad Week for Bankers... and Politicians

Even in the context of the age of banker-bashing, the last few weeks have been particularly painful for our financial institutions.

Two weeks ago, RBS suffered the triple whammy of announcing hundreds of job cuts, seeing its credit rating downgraded (along with several other global banks), then suffering a humiliating technical failure. It’s been so bad, in fact, that Stephen Hester has even given up his bonus for the year.

But for the past week, it’s been all about Bob Diamond and Barclays. Everyone knows, however, that this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

As politicians argue themselves hoarse about processes and procedures in a typical display of their detachment from the real world, the financial services industry is reeling from revelations and rumours that threaten to undermine some of its core values.

The idea that throughout the boom years and the subsequent credit crunch, any number of banks were colluding to inflate their profits whilst deceiving and defrauding their customers is truly shocking… or at least, it should be. That the scale of the media’s (and therefore the public’s) response has been muted only by this being an apparent confirmation of enduring suspicion makes the situation no less difficult for those involved.

An inquiry, whether parliamentary or judicial (does it really matter that much?), will follow and should report at least some findings and recommendations by the end of the year, and the government is promising new legislation early in the new year that will aim to find resolutions to the various issues at stake. It is unclear what this new probe means for the prospects of similar punishments for other banks to those imposed on Barclays by regulators last week.

Though the Sage is somewhat cynical of the contrived political theatre being staged this week (which does beg questions about how effective a political inquiry-cum-blame game can be) the row does speak volumes about the relative positions of the two main party leaders.

David Cameron must be at a loss to explain why he can neither find cross-party consensus on the government’s response to the scandal, nor accuse his opponents of obstructing the truth – let alone land a blow on the Shadow Chancellor who surely bears some culpability).

Ed Miliband, on the other hand, finds himself on something of a roll against a Prime Minister for whom a U-turn seems likely at any moment, so long as he is asked sufficiently difficult questions for long enough. A quotation revealing Mr Cameron’s free-market, anti-regulation instincts was an extremely powerful climax to an otherwise lacklustre PMQs performance in which the Leader of the Opposition again struggled to come up with enough worthwhile questions to fill his slot.

In fact there was a striking resemblance between the performances at the despatch box and that of Mr Diamond himself in Parliament on Wednesday – lots of bluster and plenty of humility, but precious little substance. The only difference is that one finds himself out of the job – albeit a whole lot richer for the experience. For the others the (increasingly personal) battle rages on.

Next week’s burning issue for the residents of the Westminster village to shout and scream about is House of Lords reform... The summer recess cannot come quickly enough.