Interviews need to be tightly controlled in case a well-briefed young journalist entraps the big fish into failing to be

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Interviews need to be tightly controlled in case a well-briefed young journalist entraps the big fish into failing to be aware of the local hot issue.Occasionally it can work well. Margaret Thatcher came to support me in Scunthorpe prior to the 1979 election and I was rewarded with the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph headline "Iron Lady comes to Steel Town". But the rows that ensued over who got to meet her during the private lunch at the Conservative Club meant that the bruised egos of the Tory faithful who had to be excluded threatened to negate any new voters the visit may have secured.But my fondest memory of where it can all go wrong goes back to the 1983 general election when the former Foreign Secretary, Francis Pym, visited the area shortly after he had made the unwise, but prophetic, statement - in response to the huge Tory opinion poll lead - that too large a parliamentary majority was a bad thing for democracy. Throughout the coming weeks, all the top personalities from the main parties will be press-ganged by their minders into embarrassing cheesy photocalls in marginal constituencies.My own experiences suggest that much of this activity is misdirected and a waste of time.

Of course, in theory, it should be a wonderful prospect to welcome a "big noise" to the local patch, but the point of winning over sceptical voters is usually defeated by the desire to avoid embarrassing confrontations should too many "real people" get too close. He concluded Labour's spring conference with a humble appeal to voters. But before arriving in Gateshead he made his whistle-stop helicopter tour of four marginal Labour-held constituencies during which he unveiled the vacuous new pledges that launched his campaign for a third term. It will be interesting to see whether the outcome of his visits to Battersea, Kettering, Warwick and Leamington and Shipley - all Tory seats until 1997 - make any difference on polling day. It used to be assumed that the party leaders' visits to individual constituencies had a beneficial effect for the local candidates, but I wonder, given the way in which the voters appear to have fallen out of love with the Prime Minister, whether future such visits won't do more harm than good. So the Prime Minister has announced that he is back with us. In Greece, all discussion of the value of staging the Games was submerged in the panic over whether they would be ready on time.

Now the dust has settled, Athens' experience has a more sobering message to the cities vying for 2012.Before significant amounts of public money are committed to launching an Olympic bid there are a few questions to consider: Why is there no public consultation before cities decide to bid? Why is public money automatically committed to only one side of the argument in the form of expensive "back the bid" campaigns? And since democracy is in vogue, perhaps it is time people were given the chance to vote on whether they want to pick up the bill for the most expensive show on earth.d.howden independent.co.ukThe writer covered the Athens Games for 'The Independent'. These self-promotion artists are not driven by the thought of leaving a legacy for schoolchildren; they want venues that make their sport look better than the others when the television cameras start rolling. It is just that there is no evidence to support the claim that sports infrastructure can be used as an engine for urban renewal.Olympic venues are not built to meet the needs of local communities they are built to meet the requirements of international sports federations. They should not need a green light from the IOC to start investing.Once the flag-waving begins in earnest, anyone who seeks to question why billions of taxpayers money is being spent on a sporting extravaganza, is treated as a national traitor. Either they have the money to upgrade bus, train and road networks, in which case they should do so, or they don't. Host city organisers have to sign a massively detailed contract with the IOC before starting work, one that ultimately gives away control of how the sporting infrastructure is built.As far as the much vaunted Olympic legacy effect on transport goes, it should be remembered that the IOC does not build public transit systems - governments do.