Your report (WMN Jan 20) on the likely overheads for running the Olympic Games predicts that a force of 13,500 military personnel, and hundreds of Marines and police and security personnel, will be rehearsing for the occasion and then active in making sure no terrorist threats are carried out at any of the venues, as well as dealing with all the normal breaches of law and order.

Even HMS Ocean, the largest ship in the Royal Navy, will apparently be journeying from the Tamar to the Thames to be in attendance. The budget for these Games is already astronomical, and it’s astonishing that at a time when we’re being told endlessly that “there’s no money” the cost of all this is considered perfectly reasonable. Well, as one of those without a chance in hell of benefiting one iota from my enforced contribution to all this – which seems to work out at around £150 for every man, woman, and child in the country – I think I have a right to be sceptical.

Peter Russell, Plymouth.