Bugger all.

Cab drivers got nothing except a slow week.

The Sydney Chamber of Commerce and Industry claims 231m was injected into the Sydney economy - but does not explain where, or who benefited - the same story has convenience store owners saying the week was "absolutely dead. As bad as Apec, even worse", cafe owners saying the only people who came into their cafe "were kids who asked for their water bottles to be filled up".

The article does mention that "cheap trinket" stores saw a significant boost, but I doubt that's going to inject $231m into the economy.

The only other beneficiaries I can think of:

- They had to have eaten something, somewhere. I saw a lot of them standing outside McDonalds, but few going in. In the whole week, I didn't see a single pilgrim eating - you'd think that with 250k+ in town, a few would randomly happen to be eating somewhere near me. I vaguely recall hearing that the State Government was coughing up for catering for at least some parts of the event - possibly just the final show at the racetrack, so presumably some caterer, somewhere, got a bit of money.

- The horseracing industry. Taking all the fluff out of the article, we're left with a huge in jection of cash turning Warwick Farm into a training facility on par with Randwick, and with sufficient cash floating around that they start giving free breakfast to employees. Great use of taxpayer money!

It wasn't shop owners in randwick who benefited - I was there last week and it was a ghost town. It certainly wasn't my doctor, who had to close on Friday - and it certainly wasn't his accountant, whose office was on a street only registered pilgrims were allowed to get onto, so he had to shut down for a few days too.

It wasn't shop owners in the city. It wasn't cafe owners, convienience store owners, or even fast food store owners.

Who the hell got this fabled $231m injection of money? QANTAS and the other airlines who ferried pilgrims in?