The Simple Seller

I've often liked BOM's expression - the Simple Shopper, to describe the disaster that is the government purchasing, but there's another side to it - the Simple Seller. Government isn't just bad at buying, it's also bad at selling:-

West Ham will be anchor tenants for the Olympic Stadium after the government agreed to put in an extra £25m towards the costs of converting the venue.

The additional money takes the Treasury's contribution to around £60m. Adapting the stadium could cost between £150m and £190m.

But the deal was secured only after West Ham agreed to increase their own funding of the project by £5m, to £15m. They will move in from August 2016 and pay around £2m a year rent.

So, we didn't just spend £500m on a white elephant athletics stadium, we're now spending a further £190m just to get rid of it, and West Ham are paying a peppercorn rent to get it (Emirates cost £500m, just to give you a comparison of the value of a new stadium).

It would have been cheaper just to have burnt the thing down.