We Pay for Indian Olympic Team
They Win No Gold Medals
As the Olympics drew to a close a couple of weeks ago Guido reminded readers just how much they had forked out for the Games. Now the Paralympics are under way there is one last stat to boil the blood of Olympic-sceptics one last time.
The Indian government spent a staggering £30 million training up their athletes for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a tenth of Britain’s £300 million annual aid budget to the country. And what did we (or they) get for our money? A grand total of zero gold medals, two silvers, four bronzes and an embarrassing final ranking of 55th in the world. As for the Paralympics, India has sent just ten athletes to London. Now Indian Olympian Randhir Singh is asking for more cash:
“The government is spending tremendous amount of money and taking sports seriously. If that continues, there is no limit to what we can do. Take the case of Australia, they spent a lot and did so well. Now they have stopped spending and finished just in the top 10. There can’t be a comparison with China. They have been spending generously for a long time. We’ve just started.”
When will Andrew Mitchell wake up…
así que lo que
I spent billions on becoming the number one spastic.
If Gordon Brown was running Team GB he’d sell off the Gold Medals.
For €uros – naturally!
After making sure JPM had a massive Gold medal short position.
F. Uck the Olumpics!! – for good – for all time!
in other words the Indians have more sense than to waste their own money on useless exhibitionism
Who is India
India Hicks, top totty.
Which of the 57 states is India? Is it next to Oiho?
Even more galling when you go to India and see how they generally treat people with any kind of physical or mental disability that aren’t lucky enough to be born into wealthy middle class families.
Yes but we’d didn’t squander tens of millions sending borrowed money to foreign lands we’d have to think up other ways of squandering the money, be fair.
So do you think they would be treated better if the British withdraw aid?
After 5 + 2 +2 hours on to BT India finally demanded a direct line number to UK desk.
Will sell for £5.00 a time
What good is that? An Indian might answer in the UK.
Ah! if you want Guaranteed English with ancestry chart, that’s £50.
what sort of reduction would you want if my great grandmother might have been Irish?
If you want a shorter moniker try
see
Why not just get a decent telecoms provider?
AAISP is run by someone who can program (not config) their own firewall.
Silly Season Story.
Yes another one. What is £300m compared to the net £6 BILLION we hand out in charity to our European friends annually? Besides which the already agreed £300m to India finishes in 2015. There are no plans to cut EU aid.
cameron and his coalition partners need to wake up fast to this nutty waste of money, they seriously need to get focused or they’ll be voted into oblivion.
Dream on
“cameron and his coalition partners need to wake up”
Need to add nothing more.
Heres an idea, why not have a flat tax rate for everyone of around 15-20% irrespective of income above acertain threshold of say £10,000 per annum. Then , and heres the good bit, since many people obviously think people should be taxed more than this, we could introduce a voluntary tax facility in which anyone can pay any additional amounts in taxation which chimes with their political utterances. Would be interesting to see who takes this opportunity up !
Fuck off !
Ditto.
No you are mistaken. Many can afford to pay more – most of us here at the bottom of the scale just can’t afford it. Compulsion is the only answer.
Why isn’t Clegg talking about closing all of the tax loopholes, stopping folks sending their money to tax havens, stopping the non-dom lark?
Oh and stripping Eton and its ilk of charitable status. It’s a business, not a charity.
Tax isn’t paid, it’s extorted.
As is the BBC license fee.
It’s the TV aerial tax. Akin to a tax on letterboxes to fund junk-mail.
I’ll run past the boys in the shadow cabinet if you just hold on…….
@flagpole
That is UKIP policy.
£30million spent
£30 on training the rest on ” Officials ” expenses.
We spent the money on Lunar call centres not medals.
Tony Blair
” a staggering £30 million training up their athletes ”
Is that staggering? How much do other countries spend on training atheletes? I mean, a velodrome costs 10 million quid.
I’ve got this radical idea!
Why don’t the people who use facilities, pay for those facilities themselves?
Well, if “we” didn’t pay for all that training “we” wouldn’t win any medals.
(hint to AC1: If you heard me say the above you might hear a tone of mocking the futility of it all. Then again, you might not notice)
“we” didn’t win any medals. The athletes did!
I have this similar idea for the arts… Want funding? Sell tickets. It might just work.
To be fair, most of the funding for athletes is from a voluntary tax on the innumerate.
good lord.
You know I did consider explaining why I put “we” in quotation marks, but didn’t think it was worthwhile.
I did understand. just my way of agreeing with you.
If they want to squander money on losers why not chuck a million quid in my direction? I’m not disabled but I am shit at all sports.
How does Guido know the £30 million that India spent on Olympics is from aid money?
What do you want India to do – not compete in the Olympics because it gets aid to help the poor?
Indian Aunties are HOT!
That 300m is working hard!
So far it’s apparently paid for Indian atheletes, funded the Indian mission to Mars they have planned and financed the purchase of warships from Russia!…
Bang a different drum, ‘ey?
A spot of curry should make ‘em hurry!!!
Go Away!
We need the Indians to support Afghanistan and offer a balance to Pakistani power in the region.
No win, no Rupfee…
The United States Government spent no money on sports. We Americans do have a distinct advantage. Keeping the government completely out of sports means that they can’t screw things up. We did pretty good 46 gold medals.