Eager to jump on the Olympics bandwagon, the Tories have announced £58m worth of funding to our olympic heroes. The Evening Standard proudly announced "Tories promise extra £58m for sports funding". A stronger sentiment than the Conservative statement that said "Jeremy Hunt has announced plans that could see an extra £58 million a year being ploughed into elite and grassroots sport. "

So much emphasis in the press about how "John Major's lottery" provided the success in Beijing - but lottery money has actually gone down since 2001

What a great week it's been to be British! Our Olympians have done this country proud.

writes former sports minister Richard Caborn

Basking vicariously in the joys of Britain's continuing Olympic successes, as I hope we all are, the role of Lottery funding is being extolled by media commentators.

Bear in mind I that I watch far too much children's televison with 3 children under 10 years old - but this seemed prescient on a number of levels.  Should Blue Peter be running a competition for children to win a trip to the Beijing Olympics?  I'm not so sure.

For the latest information on Ken Livingstone's re-election campaign visit: www.londonforken.co.uk

Sports minister Tessa Jowell's announcement confirmed that the expense of staging the Olympics would be far higher than thought when Britain was awarded the games in July 2005. This more than doubled the estimated cost of staging the 2012 London Olympics to 9.3 billion pounds. The Tories accuse the government  of "massive financial incompetence" and with this level of increasing expenditure, I agree with them. The Olympics will be a first class fiasco of financial incompetence, private sector profiteering, and self  congratulatory bullshit; that will be gone in a fortnight, leaving London with debts for years. And for what?.

The London Olympic budget has been increased by 900 million from its initial cost of £3.3 billion it was revealed in a speech by Tereza Jowell.