The Commonwealth Games has come to a resounding close. What
memories, present conditions, and future possibilities does it leave behind?
These games have little to do with ’sports’ or with ’pride’. They are part of an economic strategy that is promoted to serve big financial interests through a programme of urban renewal along with advertising and marketing revenues. The Games never pay for themselves; it is public money that falls into the hands of private businessmen. Developers, real estate agents, construction companies, and people at the high end of the tourism, advertising, marketing, and hospitality industries rake in profits, while the rest of the citizens bear the debts and the social and environmental
impacts – repression, displacement, workers’ deaths, corruption, and degeneration – for years to come.