Topic: Misc.
Well well, Manchester it is then. They kept that pretty quiet, didn't they? I got up in time to switch on the news this morning for the 11am announcement and saw that the BBC and Sky both had announcers at Greenwich and Blackpool. The poor BBC bloke standing in front of the dome was blathering away when the news scrolled on the bottom that the site was to be nowhere near where he was standing. For some inexplicable reason he was allowed to continue for about 30 seconds even though there was no longer any reason to listen to a word he said. It was quite clear that neither news station had sent anyone to any of the other candidate cities. Who knew that Manchester was in with a shot?
Neil Channing is the least surprised of the people I've spoken to. He claims to have noticed a surge in money for Manchester on Betfair about a week ago, although the price swiftly drifted back out. I've followed the market from time to time and Blackpool was odds-on with Greenwich about four to one, despite all the know-it-alls on the Hendon Mob who were convinced some underhand deal had been done to fix it for the dome. The other cities were at massive prices. Spare a thought for Neil by the way. This week he's in Cardiff, one of the other candidate cities, to conduct interviews for a televised team poker event. He's a braver man than me.
