Who guards the guards

  

We place so much faith in our Elected Parliamentarians. We see them verbally, batting their way around subject after subject with all the skill that years of debating brings. Through years of subservience we accept that they have the ability and hand them the keys to everything including the one that presses the trigger on the Trident !! 

Time and again we are exposed, not to only poor decision making by these people but also woefully inadequate management of the decision they have reached and wish to initiate.  Massive overruns on expenditure are commonplace, contracts awarded and re-awarded to companies that have failed in the past, inadequate outcomes, sometimes downright expensive failures !!

Do heads roll either in Parliament or in the companies that fail to produce ? 

Are there crippling penalties applied to either the companies involved or to the Right Honourable Members. 

What of the Civil Servants whose job it is when a contract is envisaged to monitor all aspects.  

The "Quotation" phase (is the company seeking the work fit and proper),the adherence to the "Budget",once the price is agreed, and the important monitoring of the Work as it proceeds.

Now  of course all these "servants of the public purse" have found a way to relieve themselves of all this mundane work - they "sub contract" it to private enterprise and let the experts run things !!

Sadly these companies never do owt for nowt.  Greed and opportunity enters the minds of people when they have know they have a contract with the backing of the Governments paymasters (we the taxpayer foot the bill but can never be accused as being masters of anything)

The latest scandal has come to light today with G4S the company who won the contract to train and employ guards at the Olympic Site during the Olympic Games.

There has been a litany of complaints detailing the companies total disregard of the people they were supposed to have trained. 

People are at sea not knowing what is expected of them and if they have a job to do. Things are so bad the Army is now to be drafted in to secure the Olympic Site and man the procedures needed to control the people coming into the Games.           

This is revealed a week to go before the Games open.

Where were the Parliamentary controls initiated through the Civil Service and executed by LOCOG, the Olympic organisers.

Not to have had a sensible method of monitoring such an important and much publicised exercise seems impossible to imagine ?

Of course it is now coming to light that one of the factors has been the attempt by G4S to ring the last drop of profit out of what seems to be a very generous financial contract. 

G4S were paid £30,000 per person employed on site for the 16 days. 

G4S paid the people they were to employ, £6.50 / 8.00ph.  The equivalent of £7.00 x 12h per day x 16 days =  £1344 per person.

Just under 2300% profit, not bad if you can get it !!!!

   

Greed, and an "unaccountability" for the public purse is the root of this disaster but it only high lights a much deeper malaise. An inability to be "responsible" or "accountable"!