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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Londoners pay for Boris Johnson to go to World Cup

I almost choked on my Corn Flakes this morning when I saw Boris Johnson being interviewed on BBC Breakfast, not from City Hall, but from the World Cup in Cape Town.

Who, exactly, I thought, was paying for this?

It appears that Londoners are funding this trip to the sunshine out of their Council Tax, so that Boris can go and promote England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup.

It seems that some Londoners I discussed this with on Twitter are happy to see this money being spent purely to get him out of the country, but if he's still appearing on our tv screens, how does that work?

I guess he looks better with a vuvuzela than he did waving the Olympic flag in Beiing, but I do wonder why there is a need for the Mayor of London to represent the English bid. And should we really be committing to another major World sporting event so soon after the Olympics?

I had a look at the bid site and I'm not convinced we should be doing it. Football already has enough investment in this country and we certainly don't need to host the World Cup to inspire the next generation of players.

I can see the point in the Olympics in regenerating that part of East London and in investment in sport in the future, but I'm not sure whether it's worth the cost to hold the World Cup at a time when we really need to only spend money on what's absolutely necessary. What do you think?

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