The Brownies. Britain's thirteenth line of defence
I’ve
got to dig into my pocket to find a tenner for my daughter’s share of the
minibus to London next week. Despite G4S being paid a million-billion pounds to
provide security for the Olympics they’ve been forced to admit that they’ve
come up 10,000 short when it comes to actually having anyone providing that
security. They’ve offered eight quid an hour, nowhere to sleep in a city gone
mad for rental rates, and a solid lack of anything approaching food on the job
so they’re mystified as to why they can’t find enough qualified personnel to
fulfil the role. So far they've got twelve bouncers from Blackpool - and they’re not
letting anyone inside the stadium in trainers; so there’s every chance a lot of
the athletes are going to fail the dress code anyway.
Faced with the shortfall the Government
has had to step in. Initial reaction to use the army today has fallen foul of plans
in place set to reduce it by 20% (that and everyone being off getting shot at
elsewhere). The Navy having provided the latest destroyer to guard the Thames
against terrorist frigates, and the RAF a number of controversial ground-to-air
missile systems to shoot down any errant planes over Britain’s most crowded conurbation,
it has fallen to the reserves to search bags and skive off to improvise beds on
the Judo mats.
Which is where my daughter comes in.
She might only be eight but as a Brownie
she swore an oath to god and country, and across that country an army of sprouts
in brown and yellow are set to take up the slack. Used to camping and making
food over small fires they have the skills for it sadly lacking in many fat
blokes more used to standing at the doors of clubs and confiscating drugs off
people for the management to sell.
My daughter doesn’t mind. She’ll get a
specially commissioned ‘Oh for fuck’s sake’ badge to add to her growing
collection. And she’s passed the G4S training with flying colours, already able
to run off and call to her mummy when things get in any way difficult. Albeit in
this instance her mummy will be the Police, who are themselves said to be ‘absolutely
delighted’ to be working in concert with thousands of half-arsed Walty security
personnel (though the announcement was greeted by the entire Met in unison
rolling their eyes at the very thought).
The latest sponsors for the games Hello
Kitty are said to be enthusiastic at the news.
But not half as much as my daughter, as
like her great-gran she’s been put in charge of a searchlight battery..
It would be really funny if it wasn't all true.
ReplyDeleteIt's still funny.
ReplyDeleteJust a little bit tragic too.
How can they be short by 10,000 people? To be fair G4S have a track record - back in the early 90s when they were Group 4 Security (see what they did there) they'd regularly lose prisoners from prisons.They've just upped their game and lost 10,000 people
Yes indeed a comic tragedy.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the 10,00 people are in fact prisoners, which means not only are they short of 10,000 people they have also lost that many prisoners who they shipped out of prisons, trained up and are now loose on the streets of London.
Several guys I work with have been selected for the last wave of redundancy and The Royal Engineers themseleves are loosing several regiments. The last meeting I went to after the announcement gave out information that several 'trades' would totally go and lots of other areas scaled back. Fortunately my job is safe but my company which trains the soldiers is likely to have to cut back training as numbers drop.