Yet as we saw on a recent walk near the site, things are progressing well for the main stadium. At a price, though — the government was today forced to admit that costs for the cupcake have risen by £50 million, joining many other high-profile venues in corkscrewing wildly out of the supposed budget set in those halcyon, carefree days of 2005. Good job the country's not on the brink of bankruptcy, eh?
Still, there's nothing like reminding ourselves of just how good we were in Beijing '08 to lift the clouds of gloom. Right on cue comes the news that we've honoured two of our stars from that happy event, Christine Ohuruogu and Pippa Wilson. Bronze statues? Streets named in their honour? Nothing so bland. No, a pair of tunnel boring machines on the Olympic site — which, glamorously, will be used to construct a 1.8km sewage system — has been named after the gold medallists. There's a picture of the happy couple right here, just to prove that, despite all the doom-laden news about 2012, we haven't (yet) lost our sense of humour.
