Let’s call time on London 2012 - a hop, skip and jump jamboree

This is not a joke or a rhetorical flourish. The planned opening ceremony is still more than three years away. We do not need to accept this vast imposition as a fait accompli.

The event could, at this juncture, be relocated in one of the other cities that have already held the Olympics recently. And where they are broadcast from is a matter of complete indifference to any Londoner I've ever met, even among the minority who actually get something out of the old hop, skip and jump.

As for the zones in Stratford and elsewhere, construction should be halted at once while costings are made for converting the sites into houses and hospitals instead. There may well be a Keynesian argument for supporting major works with public money but they need to be better planned than these single-use stadiums. Unless stopped, the Olympics will leave a "legacy" of structures to be converted afterwards. Do it now.

None of the arguments put forward by the hapless Tessa Jowell make sense. The 2012 Olympics will not inspire young people to take up sport themselves and become more fit and healthy. That can only be done at ground level, not by building a daft "velodrome" at a cost of £105 million.

And we were, of course, deliberately duped about these Olympics all the way. The original estimate used to launch the bid of £2.4 billion was just a con-trick, as Ken Livingstone admitted last year. By the time of the actual bid in 2005, the figure had risen to £4.1 billion, a sum the Public Accounts Committee subsequently dismissed as "entirely unrealistic".

In March 2007, Jowell announced a revised figure of £9.345 billion and the Games chiefs still insist they will remain within this budget. But a former Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, Jack Lemley, has admitted that they had long been working with an estimate of £12 billion and the real figure might be £20 billion. We do know the figures will only go one way: up.

One result of the crash is that we all have begun to take these vast figures of public debt more seriously. Where before they seemed just too big to have any personal consequences for us, we have begun fearfully to realise we and our children must pay every penny. We may have been tricked into the 2012 Olympics but this is one nightmare we can still change. Can't we?

What I suggest may sound unthinkable. But what's really unthinkable is to continue with this ever more costly monstrosity.

Dame Judi's industry perk

It's always creepy when critics come over all lovey-dovey and, instead of carping, present awards. It's like a bunch of wolves getting together to tie a bow on the year's prettiest lamb.

The Critics' Circle, the professional association of reviewers of dance, drama, film, music, art and architecture was originally formed back in 1913 but it was not until 1980 that the film contingent decided to start bestowing their own prizes each year. The performance still doesn't come naturally.

At the Film Awards bash at the Grosvenor Hotel on Wednesday, a pundit called David Gritten presented Dame Judi Dench with the "Dilys Powell Award" for a lifetime's contribution. Unfortunately, his speech didn't come out quite right. While trying to say that she had already received their annual Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, he actually said that Dame Judi received from the critics an "annual service". Luckily, the old banger took it in good part.

* Splendid news that some Christian groups are replying to those atheist bus ads — "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" — with slogans of their own. The Trinitarian Bible Society is paying to put the first line of Psalm 53 on a hundred London buses: "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."

Great stuff. And there's a lot more where that comes from. "For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool" would enhance any route. And why stop there? The Victorian travel writer Alexander Kinglake wanted to see inscribed on every church up and down the country these three words: "Important if true". Let's do it! Surely a text that both sides could endorse.

Museums – the best crèches in town

Mariella Frostrup, usually so irreproachable, is calling for museums to become yet more child-friendly. Frostrup has a three-year-old and she thinks seeing him "become so animated about the origin of species" is fantastic.

In fact, the current Darwin exhibition in South Kensington is almost unvisitable by adults, so overrun is it with yelling infants. Parents ruthlessly treat all museums as random outings to distract their tots for a few hours.

This is not what museums are for. On that we can surely agree. So long as we don't even raise so vile a heresy as to hint that the central purpose of the great museums is not to entertain visitors at all but to nurture conservation and research.