WHY shouldn't people in Scotland be sceptical about London's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games? The claims of significant economic spin-offs for areas outside London are tenuous at best - indeed, we've been here before, since very similar arguments were well rehearsed before the opening of the Millennium Dome.
The government somehow finds the money not just for an Olympic bid, but for the Dome, for the Jubilee Line, for London CrossRail and for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Each one of these projects is classified as ''national'' spending, paid for by the UK Exchequer.
But it is not the understandable ambivalence of many Scots that is likely to dash London's hopes in the end. Competition from Paris, where the key venues already exist, where accommodation is not a rip-off and where the transport system actually allows people to move around, will see to that.
Iain Docherty,
60 Novar Drive, Glasgow.
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