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Richard: July 2012 sees the summer Olympic Games come to London. And a lot of people are really, really excited about this most global of events. But for this week's podcastsinenglish.com we're going to talk about a few areas of concern that have come up.

Jackie: Yes, four areas. What... which two are you going to talk about, Richard?

Richard: I've looked into the... the cost and the security.

Jackie: And I shall be talking about the legacy and the commercialism. Richard, the cost: it's gone up, hasn't it?

Richard: Yes. When London bidded in 2005, they said it would cost 2.4 billion pounds.

Jackie: Well, that's a lot to start with.

Richard: It seems a lot but now the latest estimate, Government estimate, they're saying it's going to cost the UK Government 9.3 billion pounds.

Jackie: So three times more expensive.

Richard: Yes. Interestingly, 9.3 billion pounds, approximately 15 billion dollars is the same amount as it cost Athens eight years ago. However, a lot of people are saying it's costing an awful lot more. There are a lot of associated costs which could put the bill up to 24 billion pounds.

Jackie: Now I know you're also talking about security because that has added to the cost, hasn't it?

Richard: Well, yes the security on a number of different issues. The border security um... they've employed an extra 500 border staff, but there's been a problem there because apparently the new border staff have been letting in terror suspects.

Jackie: Are you're talking about the border staff at the airports?

Richard: At the airports, yes. So that's a problem.

Jackie: So, they're not trained enough.

Richard: They're not trained enough. But never mind that, more recently there's been a big issue with the private contractor, G4S, who were supposed to um... contract 13,000 staff for security for the events at the Olympic games and apparently a lot of these people, they haven't showed up for work.

Jackie: Right, so they've... they have actually recruited all of these people, you're not... no?

Richard: They haven't recruited all of them, they need to recruit more so therefore  um... the UK government has had to bring in an extra three and a half thousand troops, soldiers, to do their job.

Jackie: And they'll charge of course, you see.

Richard: Exactly. So the security is going to be a huge cost. Paying for them and also extra police as well.

Jackie: And I know that people are unhappy about um... those... those people living in flats near... near the Olympic Park who have missiles on their roofs.

Richard: Yes um... as an extra security issue they've placed six um... ground to air missile batteries on the top of some big buildings in London including um... residential flats.

Jackie: Well, I think that leads nicely into the legacy actually Richard because the Olympic Stadium, the Olympic Park, is based in the East End of London which is, traditionally, a hard-up area, it's a poorer area of London and one of the things that they said was, we will regenerate this area. There is a new  um... shopping mall in the area, and there's a new railway line.

Richard: The biggest shopping mall in Europe, I believe.

Jackie: However, the Olympic Park or the Olympic Village which has accommodation initially that was going to go as much as possible to local people at affordable rates.

Richard: For people to live in?

Jackie: Exactly. But they say that yes, some of those flats will go to local people at 80% of the market rate but in the East End of London even a reduction of 20% of the local... of the average rent is not affordable.

Richard: Not affordable by the local people yes, so you're going to get the rich bankers and what have you moving in, aren't you?