Damn, I wish we had Channel 4 on our digital package so I could’ve seen this expose of Sebastian Coe (sorry, that’s Lord Sebastian Coe, Baron Coe, KBE; do forgive me, your bloody lordship) the social-climbing former athlete.
A while back I wrote about the way the mismanagement of the 2012 Olympic bid by Sebastian Coe and then Minister Tessa Jowell was symptomatic of New Labour’s lower-middle-class idolisation of titles, money and the rich and that the spiralling costs of their grandiose plans were (and still are) draining money from the taxpaying community and into the pockets of parasitical accountants, lawyers and international consultants.
What I didn’t know then was that Lord Coe – who never actually had a proper job that didn’t come from athletics and who’s managed to parlay the accidental ability to run fast when he was younger into a career that’s most lately seen him ennobled as one of the ‘great and the good’ and the profit from which he’s used to start a chain of health clubs – wasn’t just idolising the superrich, but angling to join them, using the Olympics as his springboard.
Coe accused of ‘profiting’ from Olympic bid as arts and community groups lose out
By Andrew Johnson
Published: 09 September 2007The 2012 London Olympics – already under fire for draining lottery money from the arts – are likely to be plunged into further controversy tomorrow amid allegations that Lord Coe has profited personally from his position as chairman of the committee organising the games.
In a Dispatches programme to be screened on Channel 4 tomorrow, the former Olympic 1,500m gold medallist is accused of using his success in winning the Olympics for London to make personal profit. In contrast, the Olympics are draining resources from arts groups after costs spiralled to £9bn.
Not just arts groups: community groups too. Thanks to Jowell and Coe’s mismanagement the shortfall is being taken from Lottery Fund monies assigned to vital community groups. Llet’s not forget that this money is the public’s money, not government money, not tax revenue, but the public’s money. Taking it for the Olympics without so much as a by-your-leave is essentially licensed theft.
Coe and his advisers are all atwitter about the documentary:
Lawyers acting for the Tory peer were trying to make last-minute changes to the programme over the weekend, claiming some of the allegations were libellous. A spokeswoman for Lord Coe said he denied any wrongdoing. She added: “I think the programme may change quite a bit before it is screened.”
Go on Ch4, publish and be damned.
I will admit to a certain animus against Coe, albeit by proxy. When I was at university one of my fellow law students (a middle-aged woman of Hyacinth Bucket tones and proportions) was a Tory big wheel, if that’s not a contradiction in terms, in the Cornish constituency of which Coe was MP – and she never let us forget it.
All you ever got from her was her diinner parties with Coe, her graden parties ith Coe, her lunches with Coe and how witty. celver and charming he was. Blech.
I suspect she had an orgasm on the spot (probably her first ever) the first time he came to dinner after his ennoblement, though there’s a vicious little part of me hopes he turned down her invite on the grounds she wasn’t posh enough for him anymore.
But that’s by the by, except to explain why I have an extra personal frisson in seeing him exposed – if these Ch4 allegations are to be believed.
Coe certainly makes great play of his position as Chair of London 2012 when touting himself as a public speaker.This is from his page at CMM UK Celebrity and Endorsement Booking Agents’ Keynote Speaker Bureau
In May 2004 Seb was appointed Chairman of London 2012, the company bidding to bring the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games to London. Seb is responsible for overseeing all aspects of London’s bid to develop an exciting and winning package.
London’s bid has been short listed as one of five venues for the Games and Seb will help promote London’s bid internationally to the sports community in an attempt to steer London to becoming the first city to host the event 3 times.
It’s certainly being presented as a unique selling point in marketing him as a speaker, but is that enough for Dispatches to allege corruption?
To my mind Coe is a walking exemplar of a whole riotten system of patronage which promotes know-nothingness and banality (since when has the ability to run fast denoted wisdom or political talent? ) to influential positions on the basis of no experience or talent whatssoever bar the ability to charm the gullible and do very nicely out of it, thank you.
Lord Coe, 50, who is paid £285,000 a year as chairman of the Organising Committee, is in demand as a speaker at small-business forums where he uses the successful campaign to win the games as a platform for advice.
As far as I’m aware, being a greedy, greasy, political climber isn’t actually a crime, as yet. If it were half the government would be banged up. If the speakers bureau is all Ch4 have it’s hard to see it justifying a whole expose and they’d’ve done better to have examined the whole bid. That was bad enough.
TThe Olympic infrastructure will take one-sixth of the lottery pot during the years between London winning the bid and the Games, according to Hansard.
“The irony that local community sports teams and training facilities are losing out [while] organisers are making personal profits is profound,” says Sian Berry, the Green Party’s principal spokeswoman.
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