.....is how many people are shocked when they find out that G4S are the old Group 4, who didn't exactly have the best reputation in the 1990's.

... a private company has provided a bloody awful service and then changed its name to try to confuse everyone.

is that not only did they have a stonking nailed on profit of in the region of 10 grand per guard but they also had 34,000 applicants for the jobs.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/34000-apply-for-2012-security-jobs-6295082.ht

It takes a certain kind of genius to screw it up so badly when everything is running in your favour.

There are a few firms besides G4S who've stitched the government up over the Olympics, and as we have seen from things like PFI, there is clearly something very wrong with the way that government deals with outside contractors.

Myself, I suspect that there are too many people doing these deals whose only experience of the private sector is reading about it in a book.

by wicked private sector negotiators.

In fact many public sector contract negotiators are surprisingly tough and good at their jobs.

The problem is that they do not always sign off on the deals.

Many of the parties involved in that process go onto have 'relationships' with the winning bidder.

The non executive Directors of G4S make interesting reading including one ex Gas Regulator and one former Labour Home Secretary

Where public money meets private contracts the drains always smell.

I believe "Consignia" is out of copyright at the moment ....

The Skin

Group FS? GFSecurities? GFS? GFSecs? They'll need to pay a shed load of cash to some idiot consultant help them purify the brand, but renaming is a fail safe charm.

...

It appears that G4S were originally only asked to supply 2000 staff when the original contract was signed in 2010.

This was increased by 8000 when the security requirements were revised and second contract was signed in December 2011.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18840464

Given the inevitable concerns about security in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings you have to wonder why LOCOG left these contracts so late in the day and got their original estimates of the numbers of staff required so spectacularly wrong.

G4S shareholders might also like to ask why the company directors were so keen to sign up to a deal that they could not fulfill. Presumably they have not understood that a basic point of contract negotiation is to avoid writing bad business since it is nearly always worse than not winning the contract at all.

In fact most of the private sector contracts awared in relation to the Olympics appear to have been total stitch-ups.

Hosting the Olympics is enough of a waste of public money as it is without letting suppliers run riot.