An aeronautical engineer called John William Dunne undertook the first
systematic study into the existence of precognition. He published his
findings in a book, An Experiment with Time, in which he attempted to
establish that some people had the ability to see the future in dreams,
often without realising it. Precognition is not a common ability in Great
Britain today. We specialise in post-cognition.
It is a talent comparable to the moment in Blackadder when Lord Percy
Percy, attempting alchemy to save his friend, Edmund, from financial ruin,
invents instead a worthless green substance. “Can it be true,” he marvels,
“that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest Green?”
“Of course, you know what your great discovery means,” Edmund asks.
“Perhaps, my Lord,” Percy replies.
“That you, Percy - Lord Percy - are an utter berk. Baldrick, go forth into the
streets and let it be known that Lord Blackadder wishes to sell his house.
Percy, just go forth into the street.”
Precogs, as Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer, called them, can see
what will happen before it happens. This is a gift. Post-cogs, however,
successfully identify only that an event was always likely to happen once it
has taken place and everybody is in bother. An example of post-cognition was
heard last week when the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that
the economic downturn began last December. Had that statement been made 14
months ago, it would have been of use.
Economists forewarning the world of impending financial meltdown would have
been very welcome back then. Even now, had the group instead defined when
the present period of intense recession would end, it would be helpful.
Instead, it pulled off something akin to Neville Chamberlain warning Winston
Churchill about Adolf Hitler after war had been declared. “He looks a right
old barrel of monkeys, Winston. I'd watch him, lad.”
In recent weeks, once-cheerleading commentators have post-cognitively worked
out that this country cannot afford to host the Olympic Games in 2012. They
have cited overspending, poor accounting and broken promises. They have
speculated whether the money would be better spent elsewhere, identified
that £550 million swiped from local sports projects to finance an elite
event lasting three weeks hardly constitutes a legacy and questioned the
mantra of regeneration for a part of East London that was never as derelict
as we were led to believe. Well, nice of you to join us. Thanks for that.
It is no longer considered off message to admit that spending £9.3 billion on
a fleeting festival in the middle of a financial crisis is calamitous,
because Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, has said as much. Jowell said
that had the Government known then what is knows now, it would not have bid
for the Games, a piece of post-cognition par excellence, as our sniggering
French rivals might say.
Jowell backtracked and claimed that what she meant was that the bid would not
have been made now because it would be perceived as extravagance. Either
way, the cat is out of the bag. The underlying coda is that it would have
taken a genius in the field of economic forecasting to have seen this
unfold, which is a pity because that is precisely how Gordon Brown was
painted for the past 11 years.
Yet it was obvious to any person with his eyes open that this country could
not afford to host an Olympic Games, whether the bill totalled nine billion
or £9.99. A Government whose NHS can no longer afford to administer
life-extending drugs to its citizens did not have the money. A country that
sits 22nd of 29 nations in a study of qualifications gained by
school-leavers while preaching education, education, education was never in
a position to welcome the world. There is no breaking story here, no
ticker-tape newsflash scrolling along the bottom of the screen.
Those just cottoning on to the reality of the Olympic bid are in the same camp
as the late objectors to the War in Iraq. They would like you to believe
that they have been misled, their brilliant logic has been undermined and it
would have taken an earnest government dossier or the worldview of a
complete cynic to join the dots from the beginning. But the truth was there
with bells on all along. Kitten, from Big Brother 5, may effectively
have voted for her own eviction, but she had the wit publicly to oppose the
Iraq War.
It is not that Britain can no longer afford the Games, but that it never
could. Nothing about this was unpredictable, from the money now denied
humble yet essential village hall projects - wait until five years after the
Games is the present message to communities beyond the Olympic bubble - to
the costly, yet somehow still crummy, treatment of the displaced businesses
by the London Development Agency (LDA).
Imagine visiting the house of a friend and discovering mattresses in the hall,
bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, breath condensing in the air, and then
looking outside to see a lavish swimming pool being constructed in the
garden. Priorities need sorting out here, you might think. Well, that is
what it is like to embark on a vast and unnecessary Olympic construction
programme when insufficient funding exists to run practical health and
education services. If transport improvements were needed, why not just make
them, without tacking on a velodrome?
Regeneration is the latest arse-covering buzzword, yet this presumes the whole
of East London will be rejuvenated by a project that is localised. It is not
just that the Olympic Games mean little north of Watford, they do not mean
too much north, south, east or west of Stratford and Hackney Marshes,
either. Will life change greatly in Plaistow, Canning Town, Stoke Newington
or Bethnal Green, areas of the capital that could also do with a pick-me-up?
Hardly.
Much of this was a red herring from the start. In attracting support for the
bid, photographers would be steered to derelict space protected by wire
fences and rusting gates locked with bolt and chain. Often the sites used to
illustrate these articles were owned by the LDA and unsold because of the
potential Olympic redevelopment. Unsightly is not the same as unwanted or
unnecessary, anyway. Yes, electric pylons in the Lea Valley do look ugly; it
does not mean that they are without purpose, though.
Marshgate Lane, where 300 businesses were turfed out to make way for the
Olympic site, was no more in need of regeneration than any unlovely
industrial estate in any corner of the country. The businesses within were
not pretty, few employees went to work in suits or were involved in
Britain's great growth industry - invisible money transference - but
millions still needed to be paid in compensation when they moved because
they were viable concerns. Even now, some have been forced by heavy-handed
LDA tactics into unfavourable locations or been underpaid for the costs of
the upheaval and inconvenience. Legal challenges to the accounting process
have continued throughout the year.
It could be that more will be added to the Olympic bill, certainly as security
- which was the biggest chunk of additional expenditure at the Games in
Sydney and Athens - is yet to be fully considered. So now, as Britain's
finances are squeezed until the pips squeak, the post-cognitionists are
seeking alternate venues, and not just cycling in Manchester and shooting in
Bisley. Paris, beaten into second place in 2005, has been mentioned, as has
Beijing, where the Olympics were hosted last summer at a cost of only
£1,867,762.42p per competitor (£20 billion project, 10,708 athletes),
because when the price of protest is a period of state-enforced
re-education, who is going to argue?
And wouldn't that be a dandy message to send around the world? “Swifter,
higher, stronger ... or else.” For a proper Olympics, folks, you can't beat
the totalitarians. Say what you like about democracy, but it is costly and
absolutely no use when you need to order 900 soldiers to stand in nappies
for seven hours without a toilet break to unroll the centrepiece of the
opening ceremony. What do we care if another agricultural community has to
endure a government-ordained drought to better aid the Olympic water supply?
Gets us off the hook, doesn't it?
Then there is post-cognitionist proposal two: the austere Games. Like 1948,
without the wider sense of community as we banter with the caretaker to open
the church hall for the badminton or steal next door's deckchairs for the
110 metres hurdles. It is too late. In the 21st century, when all is built
on specious show, marquee names and productions, there is no such thing as a
financially viable, penny-pinching Games.
Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, admitted that he knew the cost
had been underestimated and a Government report said the whole thing had
little merit beyond the jolly-up, but still it went ahead. The time to
introduce thoughts of austerity or logic was four years ago, but few were
interested in precognitive thought then. Now we are stuck with the Games and
it is our duty to do the job properly, no matter that it hurts.
One critic sniped that our Olympic organisers could not be trusted to run a
whelk stall, but typically forgot that running a whelk stall is hard. There
is live produce to keep fresh, variances in cost, supply and demand, a
slender profit margin to maximise, staff issues. It is far harder to run a
whelk stall than it is to organise an Olympics because the stallholder plays
with his own money, not £9.3 billion belonging to somebody else. And unlike
all this post-cognitive intellectual masturbation, to do that actually
requires a bit of thought.
