It's a sign of the times, literally. The 2012 Olympic logo, proudly displayed by an assembly of New Labour luvvies on Monday, superbly captures contemporary British society and its pandering to the middle-class chattering classes.

A team without talent from one of the world's most expensive branding agencies, Wolff Olin, sat in a room with bean bags in designer glasses to put together a pile of tosh and ripped the taxpayers to the tune of £400,000. And then, to rub salt into our already-patronised wounds, cabinet ministers, sports luminaries and other appointed cronies tell us the logo is all about London being ''edgy''. It's edgy all right - the National Epilepsy Campaign received complaints from members who had experienced fits after viewing the logo in context on the Olympic website.

How very New Labour the whole affair is; instead of running an Olympian 'logo drive' among talented design students from under-privileged backgrounds, the organising committee salivates at an incomprehensible logo from one of our leading 'brand consultancies', whose invoice will certainly be a lot easier to decipher than the work they are being overpaid for.

And the Olympic chiefs were unrepentant: Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, said: “This is a bold logo. We were a bold bid and this will be a bold Games. We make no apology.” No competition was held for the work. I assume Mr Deighton was proud of that as well.

As if the Olympics project is not costing us enough already. By the time the last bit of concrete is rolled over the world-famous Hackney Marshes football pitches to make way for a jumbo car park, we Londoners will have stumped up around two grand each, and the total bill will be around £10 billion over budget. Just what the country needs with the National Health Service creaking under the weight of demand and nurses being paid in a year what Thierry Henry earns in three days.

The logo is impossible to understand, and does absolutely nothing to enhance the image of an already troubled project. If my seven-year-old brought that back from school as a sample of what he had done in class, I'd sue the education authority. And more sickening than the logo itself was the sight of organising committee chairman Lord Sebastian Coe at its launch praising it to the hilt, with Andy Murray and other British sporting heroes (there weren't many in that collection) pledging their support for the Games.

My late father would often tell me about his pilgrimage from Leeds to London for the 1948 Games, when athletes were billeted in army camps still with the smell of gun oil from War War II and where the real spirit of the Games shone through. And, more importantly, for which the logo was just right. So why not change 1948 to 2012 and use the same one (http://stuffem.wordpress.com/2007/06/04/olympic-logos-1948-2012/). Come to think of it, we could do with the famous intelligence station at Bletchley Park which decoded the Germans' Enigma to decode what the current logo means.

Tony Blair and his cronies have made a nasty habit of courting media celebrities and the cool, hip, creative mafia to further their political ends. But this is one love-in too far. The government should demand the return of all the money from Wolff Olins (it has been reported that payment came from private funds, but of course in New Labour parlance that means a knighthood for someone), and give the brief to a design student who needs a few hundred pounds for a backpacking trip to South America. At least that way we know the job will be done properly.