Monday 13 August 2012

Winner’s circle [updated]

image

This is what a golden group of NZers looks like on their day off.

After a hell of a good Games for NZ, for a 16th place on the overall medals table and a fourth place on the “medals per capita” table.

Damn good.

And never mind the talk about throwing more taxpayer money at local sportsmen and women; if truckloads of taxpayers’ money at people were a guarantee of success, Australia’s sports trough would be full of gold. But it’s not.  Australia’s medal cost taxpayers $A10,000,000 each. Meanwhile, Britain’s medals cost their taxpayers under ten pence per medal .

So it’s not primarily about money. It’s about what’s going on people like that golden crowd above.

It’s what’s going on behind those smiles.

UPDATE: Oops. That’ll teach me to dash off a post without checking it first. British medals cost British taxpayers ten pence each—i.e. ten pence per taxpayer. So with 65 medals at £264 million of OPM (Other People’s Money) that’s a total of £4 million per medal.  Turns out nationalism is expensive after all.

3 comments:

Peter said...

Hi Peter
"Britain’s medals cost their taxpayers under ten pence per medal"...I think the source calculates this "per medal and PER TAXPAYER"....hence there is no point comparing the 10 pence with the $10000000...

Peter Cresswell said...

Oops. Thanks Marm, well spotted. Have amended the post accordingly.

Anonymous said...

To be fair, 60% of that 264m quid came from National Lottery grants rather than involuntary taxation.