SOME late breaking Olympics news.

Due to threatened strike action, the racing certainty of rotten weather and generalised grumpiness, the entertainment at the opening ceremony of London 2012 a week today will now consist of a man making a balloon animal. Failing that, Boris Johnson, armed with a comb and paper, will take requests from the crowd.

A joke, but only just. Given the atmosphere in the run up to the London Olympics anyone would think the country was preparing for an invasion of wasps rather than getting ready to stage one of the greatest shows on earth.

The mood has been grim for a while, and no wonder. The £9 billion cost is an obscene amount to be spending at a time of supposed austerity. Then there are the shocking hotel prices and travel costs imposed on anyone outside the M25 corridor who has the cheek to want to attend the main events. When they said London 2012, they really meant it.

Add to this the unedifying spectacle of big business, desperate to recoup its sponsorship cash, trampling over anyone who dares to use a copyrighted logo or word. Plus the threats of industrial action, rows over dedicated road lanes, heightened security and the giving away of unwanted tickets.

Then the security firm G4S, or G4Nothing as it should be renamed, made bad on its contracted promise to provide enough security guards, forcing the military to be called in. To add to their duties defending Queen and country, it seems the infantry are now expected to save the posteriors of duff home secretaries and grotesquely incompetent chief executives.

Just when you thought the mood could hardly become more vinegary, in wades Alex Salmond. Scotland's First Minister did not do a lot for Team GB spirit this week when he said 2012 could be the last Olympics featuring Scottish athletes in the UK team. That is assuming the country votes for independence. And that there will be enough training facilities in Scotland. And enough cash to fund athletes. And enough talented youngsters coming through the system at a time when childhood obesity is predicted to increase.

Mr Salmond might, of course, have a cunning plan to win gold in Rio in four years' time. Perhaps he will dispense with the need for Scottish athletes in general and instead ask that he and his fellow SNP MSPs compete in such special events as defence U-turns and championship level courting of Rupert Murdoch. That will bring home quite the medal haul.

All told, the Olympics has begun to look like one big vulgar cash-in for everyone except those poor saps, us, who will ultimately be paying the bill. No wonder there is a general air of the public being tired of these games before the first starting pistol fires a shot.

The Olympics will triumph, though. It always does. The history of the games is a long and sometimes troubled and tragic one. From a hateful dictator trying to use the 1936 Berlin Olympics to prove a sick notion of Aryan supremacy, to the terrorist atrocity at the Munich games of 1972, the Olympics has seen humankind try its worst to derail the event and destroy its spirit.

The heroes – Jesse Owens, the titan of the 1936 games foremost among them – won out in the end. When set against this history, transport hiccups and lack of ticket sales for certain events look like the molehills they are.

Boycotts, boors, cheats, meddling by bureaucrats, rampant commercialism, scandal – the Olympics has come through it all. It may no longer be the untarnished beacon of civilisation created by Baron de Coubertin, but it is still one of the better ways countries can get together without warring.

The UN is an ineffectual bad joke, the EU is crumbling under the weight of debt and indecision, parliaments everywhere are losing public support. There are few international or national institutions that haven't been tested by these times. Given this, we are hardly in a position to rubbish what the Olympics tries to do, and what it stands for. If it still works, and it does, there are many other things that need fixing before we turn on the Olympics.

What is important about the Olympics, and granted it can be hard to see for all the money- grubbing going on, are the athletes and the people who cheer them on, whether they do so at the breakfast table while reading the newspaper, or while perched on a seat at an Olympic venue. The games bring a myriad of benefits, some measurable – jobs, trade, tourism – and some not. Of the latter, it is hard to put a price on the sheer drama and excitement generated by athletes giving it their all. Regardless of the hype and commercialism surrounding the Olympics, it is not politicians or corporate types who will be on the starting blocks, in the pool, or on the beam, when it matters.

In the words of de Coubertin: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well."

I got a sense of what that meant in practice when I thought about one of the many volunteers who will be at Hampden next week for the start of the football event. This is the event, you will recall, that in ticket sales has proved about as appealing to Scots as synchronised salad eating.

This volunteer is of a certain age, an age when they could and should be taking a well-earned rest from early starts and late finishes. But come next week they will be at Hampden, giving up their time to make the event a success. They won't be paid a sausage (though I believe meals are available), but no matter. It is the taking part that counts, handing something back to an event that has given them so much pleasure as a spectator over the years.

That volunteer deserves a medal, as does everyone else who can look beyond the fog of harrumphing that has surrounded these games and enjoy the Olympics for what it is, a salute to us all, winners, losers, and spectators alike, anyone who still wants to be in the game of life. Those in charge of the Olympics might try to wring every penny they can from it, but as long as there are folks like our Hampden volunteer they will never sell its soul.