The company may have lost £50mill because of this fiasco, but it's a disgrace how this company has let the country down in this way.
It's terrible how this has happened just when the country needs it the most.
Thank goodness for the army stepping in at the last moment when needed.
G4S should be ashamed. It should be banned from trading as a company on the UK shores.
Another company should be formed and employ all the people in G4S so none but the decision makers of that company can remain employed.
The decision makers from the company should be deported down the mouth of an active volcano.
It's a national disgrace.

Mark

If I were the MOD, I'd charge a high hourly rate for each soldier and make a large profit out of G4A.

Does anyone actually believe the government will deduct anything like the tens of millions being talked about from the bill? My gut instinct is G4S will still do very nicely out of this

There is some confusion as to whether there is actually a penalty clause or not. However that may be largely irrelevant as G4S have publicly stated they will cover all costs of additional security staff (i.e. police and army) for the Olympics. As many football clubs have complained about in the past, the Met charge a horrendous rate to provide their services on a private companies tab. I can't imagine the Army are going to cost less. If G4S was ever going to make any profit out of this contract, I suspect they just kissed it goodbye. Once you add in the extra 'cost' of the bad PR it's brought - seriously, if you were in charge of security at a venue and had to put a contract out, would you bet your job on G4S doing their job after this? - it's going to have cost them an awful lot of money either way.

Jon

Doesn't surprise me, I was at Silverstone last weekend for the British F1 and G4S were organising the traffic management in and out of the event - need I say more?! There were no marshalls at the critical points at the car park entrances and those that were there were completely out of their depth and had obviously not been briefed properly as to what to do in extreme situations like the weather and heavy traffic. To be fair to the staff, it wasn't their fault, but they obviously hadn't had much in the way of training and dealing with the public.

It was a shambles then, and it would be a shambles if they were in charge of security at the Olympics too. At least the army should make a better job of it. Heads should roll at G4S though.

then why was this camp for troops (at the so games) started to be built some 4 months ago ...



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Games.html

answers on a post card please ...

I'd always sort of assumed there'd be a military presence in/around London during the games. The RAF are involved, the Navy are, so why not the Army?
I think you're seeing a conspiracy where this is none.
G4S would appear to be a bit of a shambles to put it mildly.
I think I'd still rather be on a bunk in the UK than being in Helmand, however.

A lady at work told me her son had signed-up to help at the Olympics with G4S and had been down to London for all the training etc.

He told them at the outset he was studying in Manchester (university) so could only cover either Manchester or Birmingham sites.

Months went by and despite him emailing them numerous times he heard nothing and so he got himself a summer job to pay his uni fees etc.

Last Wednesday afternoon he got a call from G4S saying could he start on Thursday (ie. next day) down in London

Says it all really - couldn't run a booze up in a brewery.

at least the Govt. have a get out of jail card if things go wrong
blame G4S ...

i think that this makes a good read, ho humm ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/1 ... s-lord-coe

Apparently, the BBC are just reporting that...

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18856922

I suspect that's the nature of this type of temporary work, you're always going to get a certain percentage of staff that fail to turn up on the day, for whatever reason. That's probably why they need to be slightly oversubscribed in terms of numbers, whereas they're distinctly undersubscribed.

I'm sure we've not had the full story yet on why it's taken them longer than anticipated to get staff through the training and vetting procedure. I heard the other day that they only need 5 days' training - and we're 2 weeks away from the start of the Games, so technically there's still time to train extra staff (if they can be found!). I think there's another contributing factor, which will no doubt become clearer as time goes on.

I'm guessing (and it is just a guess) that there needs to be independent criminal/security checks on everyone, much in the same way anyone who works with kids are vetted - perhaps these checks are the cause of a backlog? Maybe this part of the process is out of G4S's hands. Anyway, that's no excuse for G4S not planning this better and communicating with potential employees, many of which had apparently register interest and heard no more from G4S so, quite rightly, went and found alternative employment. A failure of communication on G4S's part, no doubt.

eCRB? Not for that. Maybe a simple 'are they on the MI5 watch list'...

Jon

PNC check?

It seems (and cant re-find the link now) that they used a lot of managers on short term contracts to manage this with only a few senior managers at the top.

If you are on a short term hire & fire contract they you will probably end up telling your boss what he want to hear and hope that it will sort itself out rathe than rocking the boat and getting fired. Afterall you will be loosing your job anyway at the end of the contract

This page seems to indicate that a CRB check is done for all applicants, along with an additional LOCOG accreditation...
http://support.tribepad.com/g4s/faqs-sc ... editation/



What's the betting that because G4S left the recruitment until too late, the CRB/LOCOG checks had a huge backlog, meaning that although they could be trained in time (5 days), the appropriate checks couldn't be done in time? Like I say, just guessing really.