Saturday, July 28, 2012

Have The Tories and Private Security Firm G4S Got Some Kind Of Understanding?


The government may think that they have got away with their shocking failures over security for the Olympic Games - they haven't.


They may have played down the comments of crass US presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, even though he did not actually say anything that wasn't entirely true, which must have been all the more jarring as the Tories and American Republicans are all supposed to be on the same side. Whatever else Mitt Romney is or isn't, he is a man with a hugely successful managerial profile. The man just saw the same total incompetence in David Cameron's Tories as the rest of us have seen and spoke out!


I still haven't heard a dissenting word from the government complaining about how G4S  let the country down so badly and caused us major  embarrassment when the eyes of the world were upon us! Also we still haven't heard a dissenting word  from G4S to describe how the Tory government left it to the very last minute to order thousands more security guards! They did not inform G4S until last December that they needed thousands of extra security staff and the Tory government also left it until then to give G4S their official contract with the finite number of  people they required. IMO, I believe G4S probably put hiring on hold until the government and LOCOG officially confirmed the numbers they wanted, they were hardly going to employ a further 10,000 people and pay for their training etc; if they were not needed, why would they? It would have cost them millions. The Tories cannot complain as this is privatisation in all of its corporate glory, this is what the Conservatives want for this country. This is what will happen in the NHS, police, defence and fire services, in fact it already is! Lookout for the future major life threatening cock-ups ahead!


In an act of  lunatic bizarre behaviour, the Conservative government *FAILED* to put any one person in overall charge of security at the Olympic Games!!! I would find that a staggering admission even in more genteel days and a certain recipe for disaster, but to do this in these days of heightened terror threats is sheer off the wall utter lunatic and reckless wanton incompetence!



Other reasons why the Tories left it so shockingly late to secure proper staffing levels with G4S is because they were hoping to do security on the cheap with thousands of unpaid volunteers and also no doubt the thousands of people sent to work for nothing on workfare programme (helping to skew the unemployment figures, the largest drop in unemployment being in London), when these did not materialise in sufficient numbers they panicked and went to G4S. 


It's odd that there is still not a peep out of G4S or the government, no mudslinging and knowing that mudslinging is the Tories default position to get themselves out of trouble is making me seriously wonder why? Could it be because each side is holding secrets about each other that they do not want the public to know? I'd request a  freedom of information request but suspect the reply would contain the excuse that as this is a security issue they will not divulge that information.


 G4S are probably scared of not winning future lucrative government contracts and this I suspect could be behind the Tories reluctance to blame them for this fiasco. I would not be surprised if the Tories bribed them to keep quiet with promises of future work. I have heard that the government have already or are about to award G4S with a huge national contract to oversee and round up school pupil truants. This could have the effect of many Educational Welfare Officers (EWOs) who work with such children and their families losing their jobs. Many EWOs have already lost their jobs due to government cuts in funding to local authorities and as a result, inevitably truanting and unauthorised absences is beginning to creep up again!


If this is the case and G4S are keeping quiet in order to secure more government contracts, we will in time get to know but yet again we are seeing exactly how this corrupt and sleazy Tory government works!


At the height of the  G4S debacle over this government leaving security of the Games until 2 weeks before they were due to start, Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson was praising G4S to the hilt and telling us how wonderful they were.


If that wasn't enough we had Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt the liar who deliberately misled parliament over the BSkyB failed takeover bid also saying how wonderful G4S was and how they were now watching them closely and how much they had improved and it wasn't necessary to bring in the extra thousands of troops on standby blah blah blah, only to announce one week later the government were going to bring in these troops after all! Again how are we supposed to have confidence in this government when none of them appear to know what they are doing? What is more Hunt announced this news at exactly the same time the Metropolitan police announced that they would be charging Tory PM David Cameron's two close friends with several charges related to phone hacking.


This government is mired in corruption and sleaze and gross incompetence right up to their grubby necks and
there is something seriously sinister about the Tories and the company G4S and no doubt other private companies muscling on lucrative government contracts and siphoning taxpayers money away from critical areas where it is so vitally needed and paying it into their shareholders bank accounts.


I understand when parliament sits again in September this subject will be revisited, I hope so, because this shockingly incompetent Tory led government needs exposing and as I have pointed out on many previous occasions, the Tory coalition partners the Liberal Democrats have the power to end this corrupt sleazy Tory government and the Liberal Democrats need to seriously think about walking away - now, while there is still something to salvage.


If they fail us now, just as they have failed us on the trebling of tuition fees, EMA, welfare reform and NHS privatisation reforms, then they will be even more unpopular than they currently are.



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