THERE are many ways to squander millions of pounds.

You can blow it all at the casino, you can get diamonds encrusted in the feet of your shoes, but by far the most fun is to make an unviable and poorly thought out bid for the Olympic Games.

Specifically, the 2012 games for London.

Our esteemed Government will decide in January whether to chuck £6million of our money down this particular drain.

Let's hope that the Rev Blair's ego doesn't get the better of him like it did for our World Cup 2006 bid and he lets this idea drop until someone takes the time and effort to come up with a proper strategy for hosting the world's biggest sporting event.

The problem, you see, is that London had barely even thought about the idea of bidding for an Olympics until they saw the success of the Manchester Commonwealth Games.

Now, 30 years ago, that wouldn't have been a problem - only two or three cities thought they could host the games and bothered to put in a bid.

But, since Los Angeles 1984 managed to turn a profit, everyone wants a piece of the action.

Before London's bid was even a twinkle in Ken Livingstone's eye, the cities of New York, Paris, Moscow, Toronto and Istanbul had already put the wheels in motion for a bid - in fact New York has already had to go through an intensive bidding process for the American nomination.

In addition, Spain and Germany are currently considering putting forward bids, with the likes of Seville or Madrid and Frankfurt or Hamburg likely to be on the starting grid.

Many of these cities have bid before - most have never held a games but few, if any, have the problems of transport infrastructure and congestion for which London is renowned.

The things that links all these cities is that they have carefully thought out bid packages that weren't scrawled on the back of a fag packet during the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games when somebody turned on the TV and thought 'that looks like fun.'

A well-planned, serious games bid can boost any city - it certainly did Manchester no harm - and, in future, it is something London should consider.

But, as things stand, I really can't see a London bid even reaching the IOC shortlist of four or five.

And winning? No chance.

That honour will go to New York.

Meanwhile, a far more worthwhile exercise, the Scotland - Ireland Euro 2008 bid has ended in failure.

Possibly this is because Ireland couldn't come up with two viable stadiums, though the amazing thing is that UEFA have found hosts - Austria and Switzerland - with a record in international football that would make even a Scotland fan blush.

Still, it's refreshing to see the tournament being moved to 'new territories' rather than being rotated around four or five big, well-equipped nations.