I don't know who you are, but you'll be like me. We don't have proper jobs. As Mrs Martin Lukes' commented, we're all "just faffing about."
Except this man. This is a real man with a real job. This is David Higgins and his job is to build an Olympic Park.
The London 2012 Olympics will cost GBP10.3bn. David's in charge of GBP9bn of that - and with it he's got to see that an 80,000 capacity Olympic stadium, an aquatic centre, a velodrome, an Olympic village and a media centre are all standing and fit for purpose in some dark hinterland of east London when the world turns up in five years time. There's no mealy-mouthiness going on when you meet David down the Rotary Club. His annual appraisal doesn't have too many grey areas.
I like David a lot, and I'd like to sit down with him in his office and get my head round how the hell he does it. If you read this very refreshing interview, and if you have ever undertaken any form of 'project' in your life, you end up doing what I've been doing today...getting distracted, your mind wandering back to David and his job, and starting hundreds of phases in your head with, "how does he know," or "what if," or "how on Earth...?"
LOCOG should be / will be looking to Beijing for lessons as they prepare for 2012. For once, LOCOG should accept a lesson in communication from China - because it's time to get a grip on the drip-drip of budgetary bungling and the tepid passion the UK has for the Olympics. If David was in Beijing he would be a Chinese national hero - the man who holds China's dreams in his hands. In the UK he's perceived as just one of a quagmire of bungling bureaucrats with acronyms and dodgy calculators, tucked away in a corner of east London, as remote from the citizens of Putney as they are those in Pudsey.
GBP60bn thrown down the toilet of Northern Rock, or GBP10bn for an experience that will shape a generation financially, physically, spiritually? I know what's better value for money. It's about time we started to see, hear and feel a campaign that connects with the country - that starts building an Olympic spirit with young and the not-so-young. David Higgins doesn't need our support, but he certainly deserves it.
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