Thank you very much for that question. I'm very glad to answer it.
The Olympics have actually been central to revitalizing east London. Cast your minds back: It's the area along the Thames that used to be old dockyards, heavily bombed in the war, never really rebuilt. It had very poor transport infrastructure and a great deal of industrial pollution from the fifties and sixties—a real smokestack area.
When we bid for the games, we planned at the very start that this had to be about more than sport. Sport would be at the core of it; it's a huge festival of sport. It's the most complex sporting event in the world. World Cups may be slightly larger in some ways, but they're for one sport. This is 25 world championships happening at once. So sports is certainly at the core, but the games must radiate beyond the core.
We felt we weren't going to spend almost £10 billion of taxpayers' money just for sport. So we looked at two things in particular: the revitalization of a particular area of the City of London; and secondly, as I mentioned earlier on, legacy, and what happens after 2012. Of course, the two things are linked.
While I haven't actually been in Olympic Park, I've driven past it and have seen the pictures and the videos, and it is the most staggering piece of infrastructure I have personally ever seen. It is vast, it's complicated, and it's many layered. It's about architecture, but it's about all the environmental dimensions I mentioned, because it has to live after 2012. And it's about transport; no one was going to get to and from the games on what existed beforehand.
That combination, I think, of infrastructure, transport, and corporate investment has radiated like a beneficent bomb burst out from Olympic Park. There has been a huge amount of money poured into local communities in the form of jobs, in the form of contracts. That, we think, will last for decades, and it's designed to do so.
The Olympics is at the core of it, but it's also about revitalization through the economy and technology and thinking about the future. As I mentioned earlier on, six of the eight major venues will be reused. The Olympic Village will become community housing, in part, and there are a great deal of other spinoffs, including the technology and one or two other points that I also mentioned. So it's a huge, integrated package of economic uplift and sustainable use.
I'd be happy to give you more detail if you need it.
You mentioned the dreaded word “security”. I was in Australia in 2000 and attended the Sydney Olympics, and they were marvellous games. They were remarkably friendly. The Australians, I think, brought into particular prominence the use of volunteers to bring people into the games and make them feel at home. They set a very high standard. We're trying to equal that in London and we have to find a balance between security and accessibility.
Australia had two advantages in 2000. One, it's a long way from anywhere. Border security is actually easier. Second, the games took place before 9/11. It was before the upsurge of the kinds of attacks that we've seen across the world. In the U.K. we have homegrown security concerns; they don't have to be imported.
What you've seen in the British press—and the British press loves hot stories—is the ring of steel around London. We have thousands of the Metropolitan Police. We have thousands more private security people. We have the British Army standing by quietly and off the scene. The Royal Navy is parked in the Thames. We have fighter aircraft in London for the first time since the Second World War. We have Rapier missiles perched on people's apartment buildings. That's all true. It's all necessary, it's all part of not being complacent or taking anything for granted.
But you're quite right that it's not the accent we want for the games. What we want is a friendly and accessible games. There will have to be the initial security check, but inside the park one hopes we will get something like the Sydney spirit—a London spirit that is open, warm, and freely mingling. The world is at our doorstep. We want to welcome it.