Halifax Regional Municipality is apparently dead serious about “winning” the right to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. So serious, in fact that they’ve ponied up some more of my tax money to hire Tony Holding as its director of strategic relations. Holding held a similar position in helping Melbourne, Australia “win” the bid for last years’ Games. He’s the kind of guy that calls advertising “look”, so he must be worth every cent.
If you’re at all concerned that HRM council has no idea what it’s getting us into, then you’re not alone. The Herald article links to a site devoted to stopping the games here. It is definitely worth a read – there is a petition to sign if you’re concerned and a series of interesting links for your reading pleasure.
Unfortunately, I have a sneaking feeling that the city is dead-set on going for this. I wonder if this will give Halifax the highest per capita municipal debt in the country? Top that, Moncton!
P.S. Did you notice my “clever” use of quotations around the words “winning”, “look”, and “win”? I’ll bet you did – because you are smart and good-looking! Do you know where I got the idea from (because I don’t have any good ideas myself – only ones I steal from smart people!)? I got it from the “clever” righties that have their knickers in knots over the “Canadians” that the government had to extract from Lebanon the last week or so. Okay, maybe “clever” is not the right word – it was Allan Fotheringham, who is at least sometimes funny, Peter “Bitter” Worthington, who is at best unpleasant, and Adam “Himself” Daifallah, the always-pretty and soooo optimistic.
Blevkog 
I sent this letter to Tony Holding see if we can get any answers out of him. We know we can’t get them from any of the local games committee and they seem to be running City Hall now and have silenced any questions from the Mayor and Council
Welcome to Halifax,
In the daily news yesterday you said that the Melbourne Games cost $1.1 billion yet, when you read the articles in the Australian press, including the one that called the games a third rate circus with no pulling power, you get a vastly different picture.
The renovations to MSG totalled $434,000,000, the cost of staging the games was $474,000,000 ( this is within the $500,000,000 plus range that Sir Ron Scott set as the cost of staging the games in NZ) and security was $400,000,000 for a total of $1,308,000,000 well over you 1.1 billion statement and it does not include a list of other facilities etc. A total although incomplete cost of the games from Melbourne hits 1.7 billion plus dollars. http://www.stopthehrmgames.com/pppppppppppp.htm (linked to each AU press story)
In an interview in 2002 Kevin Chamberlain put the cost at 2 billion plus matching the individual breakdown of costs. http://www.stopthehrmgames.com/M13.htm (linked to each AU press story) The initial bid for the games was $195,000,000 CDNhttp://www.stopthehrmgames.com/cost.html (linked to each AU press story) and the total income was only $175,000,000 CDN.
I’ve sent this letter to Jack So in Melbourne asking him to explain the glairing and fantastic differences between “official” statements and facts that the media published but, like the press in Australia, I never heard back from him.
Perhaps you would like to explain these discrepancies to the Halifax taxpayer.
Personally I would like to see you either explain away the vast differences or stop making statements that, according to Australian press, are appear to be misleading.
Bruce DeVenne
http://www.stopthehrmgames.com
E Mail bdevenne@ns.sympatico.ca
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