G4S

Reading through the Sunday papers today i came across this piece in The Guardian, I am from East London so keep an eye on the Olympic news.

So as this whole G4S mess has come out i thought that this could be a bit messy for Government. Anyway, back to the Guardian piece.

 Matthew Taylor writes :

 "The failure of G4S to recruit enough guards for the Olympic Games has not compromised security, according to the London 2012 chairman, Lord Coe."

Well for the price tag i should hope so!

Then this quote :


"On the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said it was "completely normal" for a contractor to fail to deliver on a major project.
He refused to criticise G4S, saying it had acted "honourably" by raising with the government the problems it was experiencing.
He said the government had "of course been monitoring the situation with G4S, and their management told us right up until last week that everything was on track. But we've had that contingency plan for many months and we are just very lucky to have fantastic armed services who can come when we need them and they will do a brilliant job."

Hmm, Don`t think this would be expected in small business. Anyway i think Jeremy should resign for other reasons. But then comes G4S response :


"G4S stands to lose up to £50m over the staff shortfall. The chief executive, Nick Buckles, who faces a grilling from MPs next week, has said ministers and Locog have been kept fully informed of what was happening and said the company had been "fully transparent" about the difficulties it encountered.
"We accept that we underestimated the task of supplying staff for the Olympics. We deeply regret that," he said. He was "very sorry" that 3,500 extra troops had had to be drafted in at the last minute."

I should hope so, you are a disgrace G4S!

and then it ends like this :

"G4S originally signed a contract with Locog to provide 2,000 security guards, in a deal worth £86m. After a review of security requirements that number was raised to 10,400 in December, and the value of the contract more than trebled to £284m.
Buckles said it had proved to be a highly complex operation recruiting so many people for a relatively short period of time.
The shadow Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, said there were "hundreds of questions" to be asked about what had gone wrong but the postmortem examinations should wait until after the Games were over."

Anyone notice anything?

If you look at this BBC news report it states :

"The contract was signed two-and-a-half years ago and one would have expected them to put everything into it. We just don't know. We need to hear from them," he said."

Who was in Government then?

And then the other thing the Guardian missed. If you click on this link you will see a director of G4S.

His name is  Baron Reid of Cardowan, of Stepps in Lanarkshire and " Director, G4S Regional Management (UK & Ireland) Limited (security solutions; risk management)".

Surely if  Yvette Cooper wants a answer she could just pick up the phone to Comrade Ried no?

I can`t believe that the Guardian would overlook a simple fact like that or Yvette Cooper. Must have been crossed wires or something.