Watching the Olympics

Today's non-story from the Telegraph is a claim that the more than 600 publicly-funded British workers attending the Olympics will exceed the number (313) of British athletes.

Unfortunately, the figure is arrived at mainly by including the 437 staff sent by the BBC "at a cost to the licence payer of £3 million" to produce 2,750 hours of coverage. It doesn't seem that expensive, in the grand scheme of things.

The Telegraph's criticism of the relatively small number of government officials is that:

government ministers and officials may not play any part in the 2012 Olympics, as opinion polls suggest Labour will have been voted out of office by then.