Leader: London Olympics 2012 a cause for celebration

The countdown is almost over. The Olympics are almost upon us. The athletes and visitors are starting to flood in for what has been billed as the greatest show on earth.

There has been an undeniable undercurrent to the London Games which has been very British.

The announcement that London had won the Olympics beauty contest fired the starting gun for a competition of Olympian standards of moaning and carping about the cost, the things that might go wrong, and the things that are going wrong.

From today some of the special travel arrangements begin in earnest.

Cue gripes and complaints about disruption to traffic, the favouritism inherent in the special "games lane" on the M4, and loudly expressed worries about whether Heathrow will be able to cope as thousands more than usual pass through.

For those seeking to seize on every hiccup and make political capital out of it, the failure of G4S to provide enough security staff has been played for all it is worth.

Is it a disaster if the Army has had to deploy more troops than planned? The armed forces are providing large numbers for security duties in any event. G4S has been found wanting. But so what?

The build-up to the games has been the playing surface on which the critics and politically-inspired doom-mongers have had a field day.

Unless things go seriously wrong, once this sporting celebration gets under way, their gloomy voices will at last be drowned out and their cynicism will be washed away by a tide of enthusiasm and the inspirational spectacle of the world's greatest sportsmen and sportswomen striving for glory and meeting sporting triumph and sporting disaster in front of an enthralled global audience.