I declare, these games

The wait is nearly over for the London 2012 Olympics. Opening ceremony kicks it off tonight.

(Well, actually, they’ve already started some of the footie events in Wales. Don’t know how that works—could they not fit two weeks of sporting events into two weeks?)

There’s a lot of speculation as to how the Brits are going to top the spectacle the Chinese put on four years ago. Ceremony director Danny Boyle’s kept a tight lid on it, but everyone’s promising it’ll be, you know, spectacular.

Okay, Britain’s ambassador to the US, Sir Peter Westmacott, is dampening the rumors just a tad. In an interview with Morning Edition’s Renée Montagne, Westmacott urged us not to expect bigger amazingness than Beijing. But different amazingness.

Boyle has promised a festival-of-Britain kind of experience, to include barnyard animals. This has upset animal protection people, and you do have to wonder what the sheep and pigs are going to make of the lights, the deafening noise and James Bond parachuting into the stadium.

I was thinking—perhaps he could swap out the critters for a Saint Trinian’s revue. Or maybe a phalanx of Morris dancers.

Well, maybe not.

One thing I’ve found interesting in the past couple of days was the, er, lively debate going on about whether the games will pay off. You know, economically. They’re costing in the vicinity of $14B and of course the organizers and HM Government are insisting that money will be flowing through the Olympics like spring melt run-off water through sluicegates.

But apparently they’re not quite convinced of this themselves. According to a story via Marketplace Freakonomics, the LOCOG sent out a letter to various academic economists, asking if there was anyone—anyone at all—who could please come up with a gravitas-laden study that would prove definitively that money will be flowing through the Olympics like spring melt run-off water through sluicegates.

Sadly, that same Freakonomics segment quotes an economist from the University of Chicago who’s done a study indicating that there’s no significant difference between an Olympics-hosting city and one nearby in terms of tourism, construction, tax revenues, etc.

On a side note, as though the Brits haven't already had enough tsuris about this, this week Mitt Romney was over there in an attempt to look presidential (and white) and at the same time hobnob with his Anglo-Saxon frères in a way that the current President can't (according to someone in Romney's campaign team). And brother Mitt just couldn't refrain from slagging off the way the LOCOG has been running the Games. Not the way he did, don't you know. Problems; they have problems. He didn't, back in the two years he headed the Salt Lake City games. Not a one.

I don't know about looking presidential, but I bet his mama didn't raise him to show up at a dinner party and diss his host's choices in table settings. It's one thing for Londoners to whinge about the event; it's another for a jumped-up politico to swan in and carp. As Prime Minister David Cameron rightly pointed out, intimating that Romney's experience with a much smaller setup in the west end of nowhere doesn't qualify him to pronounce.

(Although I found it interesting that one of Romney's criticisms was regarding the G4S security fiasco. You'd have thought that he'd have been a violent supporter of the concept of outsourcing and privatizing any public sector function, like security; and would therefore have kept his cavernous mouth shut when it turned out that the private sector screwed up royally and the government had to step in to save the day. But you'd be wrong.)

Well—regardless, I’m looking forward to the games, and definitely going to be on the lookout for the farm animals, because nothing says athletic endeavour like sheep, pigs and BSE cows.