I don't disagree with any particular point here but I'd like to point out that there are some second order effects from that investment money, it wasn't just "gone" and it didn't just go to the koffers of building contractors either.
I can give some examples;
1) Newham was a very impoverished area before the olympic stadium was set to move there. Now Stratford and Newham are desirable.. More desirable than Hackney which has been "up and coming" for as long as I lived there.
2) Internet in London is/was _abysmal_. Genuinely awful. I even wrote a exasperated blog post about it[0]. This was due to degraded and faulty ADSL being he only option and grossly oversubscribed even if it worked well- and the large providers only followed each other with fibre installations.
When the olympics rolled in there was an enormous infrastructure improvement - I even remember talking to some Telecity employees about it. -- That infrastructure was later sold on to last mile providers who expanded it a bit and I went from speeds worse than dial-up with frequent route drops to symmetric gigabit and IPv6 using a new company called "Hyperoptic". That was a real improvement for everyone in my area because they had given up on home internet. (no netflix, youtube, only basic banking websites possible).
I can give some examples;
1) Newham was a very impoverished area before the olympic stadium was set to move there. Now Stratford and Newham are desirable.. More desirable than Hackney which has been "up and coming" for as long as I lived there.
2) Internet in London is/was _abysmal_. Genuinely awful. I even wrote a exasperated blog post about it[0]. This was due to degraded and faulty ADSL being he only option and grossly oversubscribed even if it worked well- and the large providers only followed each other with fibre installations.
When the olympics rolled in there was an enormous infrastructure improvement - I even remember talking to some Telecity employees about it. -- That infrastructure was later sold on to last mile providers who expanded it a bit and I went from speeds worse than dial-up with frequent route drops to symmetric gigabit and IPv6 using a new company called "Hyperoptic". That was a real improvement for everyone in my area because they had given up on home internet. (no netflix, youtube, only basic banking websites possible).
[0]: https://blog.dijit.sh/the-true-state-of-london-broadband