On seeing TV coverage of the London Olympic Park and Anish Kapoor's Orbit tower, the grotesque tangle of steel spaghetti that dwarfs the approach to the stadium, my first thoughts were: "What a monstrosity, I wonder what crowd of parasites have been allowed to build a helter-skelter to fleece even more money from punters stupid enough to pay to see random events they actually didn't want to see in the first place?
At least they will get a birds-eye view of all the soldiers and the anti-aircraft missiles?"
It appears that, not for the first time I may add, I am completely wrong.
The structure is actually a viewing platform, some would say a vanity project, intended to be a local landmark for future generations, a twisted deformed mini Blackpool Tower.
The bulk of the steel and funding has been donated by the Mittal family. It's a shame they could not have donated it and much more to the new Forth Road Bridge project. It would have got them even more plaudits and free advertising for generations to come.
The edifice is a fitting metaphor for the entire project – the organisation of which would seem to be an eerie parallel of its BBC spoof series Twenty Twelve.
How can you, two weeks before an event which has been years in preparation, be forced to draft in even more squaddies to provide adequate security cover?
And why does it come as a surprise that if you throw Scotland a few crumbs in the form of pointless football matches there are likely to be more people on the pitch than in the terraces?
I just hope that when the Glasgow Commonwealth Games organisers buy all the second-hand stuff from their IOC colleagues, helping London to balance the books, they are not conned into buying a pile of scrap steel from an unwanted sculpture at the same time.
David J Crawford,
131 Shuna Street,
Glasgow.
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