Financial millstone

I am not interested in athletics or the majority of the events featured and admit that I will not attend any of the events or watch them on TV.

Of course the opportunity to partake in sports, at all levels, is to be encouraged but why is it necessary to spend billions of pounds to achieve it?

There are good facilities all over London for sporting activities, perhaps not to Olympic standard but certainly good enough to reduce fatties' to a normal size, if they had the interest and willpower to stick to a diet and regular exercise.

Perhaps the Mancunians had the opportunity to vote on funding the Commonwealth Games, Londoners have not.

In any case, the level of expenditure in Manchester was very considerably less than our intended extravaganza.

The basic point, where I strongly disagree with Ms Freeman, is the expectation that a minority of Londoners, council tax payers, should pay for this national and public folly.

Why should hard-pressed pensioners, for example, living on fixed incomes, be forced to contribute to festivities, where a large portion of the spectators will be politicians, foreign dignitaries, personalities', whatever that means, and their attendant army of hangers-on.

If the games are the "long-lasting legacy" as Ms Freeman believes, I believe they will be a financial millstone that has been the result of all the recent Olympic Games.

Surely they should be funded from the public purse - general taxation, not the discriminatory tax that council tax has now become.

In a recent paper, there is a report about a pensioner who has been imprisoned, in a maximum security prison, for non-payment of council tax above the rate of inflation. Is that the "exotic spot" Ms Freeman flippantly proposes in her final paragraph?

John Soloman, Belmont Road, Erith