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The council had painted themselves into a corner, and were in a very weak bargaining position. They didn't set out to shaft the taxpayers - but their rank incompetence on this has led to exactly that happening. West Ham were just smart enough to take full advantage.

There was talk last year of plans to stage some regular season MLB games at the Olympic Stadium, possibly in 2017 - I'd be all over that like a tramp on chips. If the stadium can be adapted to host those kind of events, along with regular PL football, then it could eventually start justifying...

Exactly. Something HAD to be done about the running track, it would have been a truly dreadful venue for football without having it converted. That looks pretty decent. Wouldn't want to be sat behind one of those big screens though.

Would you have wanted to be behind the goal at a West Ham game then ?

Coe was toeing the IOC's party line that if London was to get the Games, then one of the conditions of the "Legacy" was that the running track would absolutely have to remain in place, so ultimately it would still have to be usable as an athletics stadium. Coe was obviously desperate to win that...

Which is exactly what West Ham have done. They've paid a token amount to have the stadium renovated for their needs, but they were not under any obligation to pay for it entirely, as they'll never own it. Its not theirs, it belongs to the local authority. You could say morally they should have...

There is certainly a big element of throwing good money after bad in all this. But what were the alternatives ? 1. Leave it empty, save for perhaps a couple of athletics meetings a year which would attract three men and a dog. In which case the annual maintenance costs would far exceed any...

The Labour government backed the bid for London 2012, but its the local authority and Lord Coe who have the most to answer for. Coe opposed ANY plans that involved the removal of the running track at the stadium after the Olympic Games had finished.

But they're renting it. If you were living in rented accommodation, would you stump up £15,000 to have someone come and build an extension ?

But LLDC really were in no position to haggle over the deal - West Ham were holding all the cards. If Brady/Gold/Sullivan walked away, then to their eternal shame and embarrassment, LLDC would have an enormous, vastly expensive white elephant sat there rotting away. Its pretty clear that LLDC...

This is what happens when a government and local authority throw VAST amounts of public cash at an enormous vanity project for 2 weeks of running and jumping, with absolutely NO viable legacy in place afterwards. Distasteful as it is, West Ham have merely taken advantage of that folly and...