London yesterday said goodbye to its most recent Olympic Games contest. The arrival last week of a dozen members of the International Olympics Committee was treated by the British Government as might a desperate Hollywood starlet auditioning for a movie mogul. The metropolis was told to lie on its back and think of England.

The prime minister and his cabinet dropped everything to dance attendance on their guests for four days. Flags decked every route. The Queen laid on a banquet. The Thames was ablaze with lights. Everywhere the visitors went, police outriders eased their path and traffic lights changed to green. Should they get on a train, other trains evaporated for the duration. Should they set foot on London soil, small children lept forward to sing patriotic songs. The cost was millions, and not a single race was run.

The purpose of this self-abasement was to be allowed to spend a further £2.5 billion on a three weeks festival of mostly minority sports in 2012. While the festival itself - the Olympics - can usually be manoeuvred into a "trading profit", the infrastructure never does so. Last year's Games in Athens so distorted the government's budget it had to beg licence from the euro authorities and plead for aid from Brussels. Its bills are unlikely to be paid off for a quarter century. Beijing, the next host, is having to spend over $30 billion dollars on the venture. I repeat, this is for a three weeks of sport.

I love sport but these sums have become total madness. They are beyond all reason, which is why they must be treated by the governments concerned as unreasonable. The IOC has long converted the Games from a sports festival into a nationalistic horse race and thus induced nation states to compete in expenditure. The lead bidders for this year's round are largely confined to very big cities, London, Paris, New York and Moscow. This is a business for only the deepest pockets and the most grandiose prestige. Such is the cost that it is doubtful if relatively modest cities such as Atlanta, Barcelona or Sydney will ever win again.

The con trick played by the Olympics lobby is that the cost required of applicants is called "investment", whether in legacy, regeneration or infrastructure. The implied subplot is that countries are too poor to invest such money through normal democratic conduits and will do so only if the it is dusted with the glory of Olympic prestige. The implication is an insult to democracy.

The proof of the IOC tactic was shown this week in London. There has never been money for the regeneration of its East End. Suddenly there was such money, from local taxpayers, central government and the lottery. What responsible government would not yield, irresponsible government would find. This must be a total negation of the customary processes of public expenditure. If investment is needed because it yields a return, it should be needed. The return cannot conceivably be three weeks of sport, least of all in London, where the extra numbers are dwarfed by normal tourism flows.

Goodness knows what poverty is to be visited on the hapless people of China to finance their totalitarian government's bid for world status through the Games. As with those staged in prewar Germany and postwar Seoul and Moscow, the IOC seems happy to attach its name to any brazenly political venture, provided the money is forthcoming to appease its extravagance. The one thing it will not do is modify its gargantuan appetite for money.

The IOC has found in nationalism the golden key to unlock the world's treasuries. Games are now conducted in a blaze of chauvinism. Events are drenched in flags, mascots, emblems and national anthems. Country league tables are prepared and scrutinised. States spend millions on sports facilities to improve their league-table ranking. For decades the IOC turned a blind eye to drug-taking by states frantic for global glory, since the IOC was equally frantic for such glory. Nor are most Olympic sports in any sense "major". World championships in football, rugby, cricket or tennis have no need of Olympic support or of the vast national subsidies involved in the Olympics. Soccer's monumental World Cup is a village cricket competition in comparison.

The Olympics should be a simple athletics and arts festival with men and women competing as individuals not as "national heroes". The venue should be any country with the appropriate existing facilities. There should be a stop to the ever-inflating stadium requirements, making hosting the Olympics a rich nations' game. At very least the Games should be held in Greece where they were founded and where existing stadiums can be reused, albeit at a cooler time of the year.

What cannot be right is for six cities to go collectively mad every four years in the hope of being permitted to impoverish their taxpayers for an hour of glory.

• You have provided a practical down-to-earth assessment of the situation. I believe a very large proportion of the population not made rich or famous by sport would agree with you. How about a referendum on this the second biggest spend since Iraq? David Cage, Highworth, Wilts

  Heartily agree. The Olympics have become a travesty of the original ideal. I for one hope they go elsewhere. David Jenkins, Weybridge, Surrey

  What incenses me is why only Londoners will have to bear the cost. If the games realise a profit, it won't be returned to hard-pressed council taxpayers. Neil Beagle, Welling, Kent

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