Gerald Warner: Everyone shouts about austerity while spending like drunken sailors WHAT does a country confronting a stubborn recession, an imminent meltdown in a currency to which it does not belong but whose collapse will impact mightily on its economy, and an incipient global depression really need? Obviously, to host an Olympic Games. That is the gung-ho message being conveyed by the great and the good who preside so impressively over our destiny. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, wrote in his newspaper column last week a eulogy on the London Olympics of 1948 as an example of how austerity could create a sporting triumph. He recalled how, at the time of the Austerity Olympics, our athletes were so undernourished due to rationing that they sometimes passed out during training, and were asked to make their own shorts and trained on the beach at Butlins. The mayor's optimistic conclusion was: "If there are any dismal johnnies who worry about whether Britain should be putting on the Games in this new age of austerity, I have no doubt they will be routed again." So they might be, if 1948 furnished a true parallel with today. Where Johnson's argument is built on sand is the total lack of congruence between the two austerity Olympics of 1948 and 2012. In 1948 the government and the public did not simply proclaim austerity - they implemented it. The 1948 Games were so Spartan, with athletes sleeping in dormitories, that the event made a modest profit of £29,000. Today, everyone shouts about austerity while spending like drunken sailors - the government first and foremost. Rhetoric for and against "the cuts" disguises the fact that this belt-tightening is mythical: the government is spending more, not less, and the Olympic Games are a prime example of this purblind prodigality. When London made its bid in 2005, the cost of the Games was estimated at £4 billion. Today the estimate is £9.3bn and the National Audit Office has warned of a "real risk" that this public funding package may be exceeded. Of course it will, since that figure dates from 2007. The latest ominous development is that the cost of security at venues has almost doubled to £553 million; overall, security costs alone have now passed the £1.1bn mark. The extravagance of the Olympic project, in this cash-strapped country, has been egregious. The Games logo took a year to design; when finally unveiled it became evident a class of seven-year-olds could have produced something better in the course of a wet afternoon, yet this hideous daub cost £400,000. Now, most outrageous of all, an additional £41m of taxpayers" money has been allocated to the opening and closing ceremonies, the most superfluous aspect of the Games. Why not revert to a simple procession of athletes carrying their national flags through the stadium and a similar ceremony at the end? The whole world knows there is an alarming recession engulfing us; a quietly dignified march-past would have enhanced Britain's credibility rather than damaged it. Here, of course, the interested parties, ranging from politicians who love a vanity project funded by taxpayers to those seeking profitable contracts, insist that "you have to spend to get." That is true in some circumstances; but no nation that has spent on the Olympics has ever got. The downfall of Greece was accelerated by the ¤10bn cost of the 2004 Athens Olympics, followed by an annual ¤500m on maintenance of legacy sites. The Chinese government claimed the same sum was spent on Beijing 2008 ($15bn), but outside commentators suggest $40bn as the true figure. The Olympic Games could be regarded as a paradigm of Britain's somnambulistic response to bankruptcy. For Scots there is the added problem that the Olympics may detract from the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Here, too, in a smaller economy, prodigality rules. More than half a billion pounds has been allocated to the Games. Of the current budget of £523.6m, 80 per cent will come from the Scottish Government, 20 per cent from Glasgow City Council and 100 per cent from the taxpayer. Three new venues will cost £200m, additions to existing venues £70m. The Games village will cost £229m in a Public Private Partnership scheme. Looking at the urban deprivation in Glasgow, it is impossible to believe this is the best destination for so much funding. The proponents of all such sports extravaganzas talk a good game about inspiring youngsters to engage in sport: the reality, as after Wimbledon, is three weeks" dilettante imitation followed by a return to couch potato status. As for "legacy," that was the euphemism for the Millennium Dome. Like Athens, Montreal and the other cities ruined by hosting bread and circuses, London and Glasgow will suffer economically from the misdirection of large-scale resources at a time of economic crisis.