Livingstone Pans Budget

Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has panned the Olympics 2012 budget.

Speaking on BBC Sport Mayor Livingstone said that it would be a "defeat" if the Olympics in 2012 ended up costing more than £7BN.

The current budget now stands at £12BN including operating copsts, therefore he may have his hands full trying to reign that in.

The Mayor stated that the budget was in fact £5.5BN, thus muddying the waters.

Quote:

"I'll consider it a personal defeat if we do not knock several billion off.

We've now got a budget set for £5.5bn. Inevitably, things will crop up and it will almost end up at £6bn. I'd be quite proud if we kept it at that.

If it starts going over £7bn that will be a defeat.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has built in this huge contingency for just about everything that could go wrong.

Our job is to keep that to the minimum of things that could go wrong."

Mayor Livingstone then went on to say that "exploded" when he saw the 2012 Olympics logo.

"I'm the mayor of a city and the only thing any mayor wants in the logo is the name of the city enormous and predominant.

I didn't get that so I was a bit grumpy about that.

It was hidden from me up until about the last two weeks and it was too late to do anything about it.

I exploded pretty much as dramatically as the rest of the country when they saw it.

But it's the only thing that I haven't got my way on in the last two years so I can't complain."

Well said, the logo is crap as indeed is the budget.