For several days this story has had wings and more recently we have seen footage of groups of people undergoing some form of training before taking up their duties of guarding Olympic venues. G4S has suffered a public relations calamity, its Chairman refuses to back its Chief Executive, the Home Office is again in the firing line with the feisty May on the defensive and the hapless Hunt is once more doing the media round making excuses.
This blog is unable to understand how ten thousand random people, most without experience in public order enforcement, employed at short notice for this temporary purpose and given minimal training, can possibly ‘guarantee’ security at the Olympic venues.The answer is they cannot and it was never intended that they should. There has clearly been a fault at G4S. There has also been a fault by the Games organisers with their terminology and explanations.
Security in real terms for this world event was, is and will continue to be in the hands of the armed forces, the inteligence services and the police. This is evidenced by ground to air missile batteries sprouting up across East London and warships on the Thames. What G4S is contracted to provide is stewarding, handbag searches and crowd control. Originally they were asked to provide around two thousand people for this purpose. LOCOG then upped this to ten thousand. If anyone had stopped to think about it, they would have seen that this was unrealistic. To achieve the outcome would have required extraordinary organisational input from the contractor, G4S. This they failed to set up.
With the intervention of the army, the shortfall will be made up. Meanwhile a blame game is afoot. Fingers are being pointed at Whitehall officials and their Ministers for being behind the curve and late to act. There is nothing new in that.