2016 - The Olympics

So, Boris Johnson will be handing the Olympic flag to Rio de Janeiro following the successful 2012 London Olympics.

The 2016 Olympic Games will be the very first to be held in South America and it is estimated that Brazil's economy will benefit by around £25 billion bounds between now and 2027 - not sure how we know these things but somewhere, someone and their calculator have been doing the sums.

Apparently before yesterday's announcement Chicago had been the favourite and USA President, Barack Obama had travelled to Copenhagen to address the Olympic Committee. Chicago was eliminated in the first round - whoops! Tokyo was next to go and then it was down to the final two - Rio de Janeiro and Madrid.

Football legend Pele was there in Copenhagen for the announcement.

Following the swine flu epidemic this announcement has bound to have lifted the spirits in Brazil.

It is weird the emotions that people go through for this, when it was announced London had won the Olympics for 2012, I worked for Lynne Featherstone MP (Lib Dem, Hornsey & Wood Green) and we were stood in the corridor in the House of Commons behind the Speakers Chair while waiting to go in to the Table Office to dispute a batch of Parliamentary Questions they claimed Lynne couldn't ask - we won that round as well.