Premiership of Tony Blair which was an agreement to increase British contributions to the EU Development Budget for new member countries, which effectively reduced the UK rebate by 20% . On 6 July 2005, during the 117th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Singapore, the IOC announced that the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Games of the XXX Olympiad, were awarded to London over Paris by only four votes. The competition between Paris and London to host the Games had become increasingly heated particularly after French President Jacques Chirac commented three days before the vote that "one cannot trust people [ie: the British] whose cuisine
2002 Commonwealth Games at the 2008 Olympics and another eight gold medals at the 2012 Olympics, partly attributed to the availability of the velodrome. Manchester City F.C. inherited the City of Manchester Stadium, and as a result, have since found themselves in a desirable investment opportunity in age of foreign football investment. The club was taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group led by Sheikh Mansour in 2008, without the stadium, a takeover would have been far less certain. The Games were a formative moment for Manchester and Britain with then-IOC president Jacques Rogge viewing the games as an important litmus test