Wouldn't need a Typhoon to take it down. I'm not sure what the slowest speed a Typhoon can do while staying airbourne if the aircraft needed to be 'intercepted'. I suppose if ground crews really think it is a terrorist in a small aircraft and they need to shoot it down then the damage it would cause on the ground would not be that massive. But then why use a light aircraft in the first place? Flying it into a crowded stadium would probably cause a few deaths but not a huge amount of damage in the grand scheme of things.

If there are terrorists hell-bent of flying planes into major sporting events then why choose the Olympic games with all the security measures surrounding it? The FA cup final or the Challenge Cup final would be much softer targets and would be just as devestating.

Probably because there'd be far fewer watching the FA or CC finals than the olympics

Just heard on 5Live that G4S are going to pay for the additional cost of the 3500 additional military personnel who will be pressed into service and that because of this they will make a loss of between £30 and $50 million on the contract. If i was a share holder I would be asking some serious questionsof the board of directors and senior management.

I am finding that seriously difficult to believe when you consider the uprate in charging they were allowed to factor in.

They may be hoping that no one looks too closely at the other contracts they've been gifted by the UK taxpayer

Being of a very sceptical nature I don't quite read (for instance) the BBC's report on the G4S statement [urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18837524[/url which states that the company will lose up to £50million of their contract - its a very fine and pedantic point but thats not the same as making an overall loss of £50million on your work.

Its clear that the Home Office are now saying that a large portion of the POTENTIAL earnings of G4S during the actual period of the Olympics would have been paid to cover wages for the 10400 staff and that as they won't now be supplying that number then they won't be receiving some of that money - a company man would therefore be justified in stating that they will lose £50m from the contract - see the difference - and that is all that the statement on the BBC News web site is saying (at the time of posting this message).

What's sad is that in many cases, the terrorists have already won; here, for instance, we actually have superficially sane, intelligent people, actually advocating that the State [ishould[/i shoot down a passenger jet full of innocent civilians, at an unknown toll of death and destruction at some random location, as this is somehow "better" than taking the risk the plane might be destined for an Olympic venue.

There are indeed many people in the States who would rather their government shot down an airliner than let it potentially crash into (say) the White House or the Pentagon. As if murdering hundreds or thousands of your own citizens is somehow a victory if you don't let the terrorists knock down a famous building. If you don't see why that's nuts then there is nothing I can say to you.

In answer to your question, I ask you to think carefully about it and answer again yourself. What caused most of the deaths on 9/11 was NOT the plane crashes but the totally unpredictable collapse of the buildings, and compounded by the ignorance of the majority of the casualties above the impacts of the existence of a secondary fire escape route.

But it has already been posited on here that a plane crashing into any given city area will only cause relatively localised damage. (This must be true, although the proponents overlook that this would not be a low speed impact and the casualties would be widespread and worse than is suggested). And it would (but for the collapses) have been true of 9/11. So please explain to me how you would justify shooting down the Twin Tower planes, when the anticipated death toll from hitting the Twin Towers would only be the same as the plane crashing anywhere else in New York?

Please explain to me why it would be better to shoot down a plane rather than take the chance of it crashing into the White House, or the Pentagon, or a skyscraper?

Mercifully, none of you are in charge. I am certain that none of our armed forces would under any circumstances shoot down a planeful of innocent civilians, murdering many more on the ground. There is a risk that not doing so would allow a target such as the Olympic village to be struck but the blood would be on the hands of the terrorists, and not our own government.

The other fact overlooked is that no aircraft could be hijacked like the 9/11 hijacks, simply because the terrorists would not have access to the cockpit, and because the cockpit crew are armed. I also believe that following 9/11 you would not nowadays get a planeful of passengers who would meekly await their fate. Those people probably expected to land somewhere remote, and be negotiated as hostages. Nowadays, people would certainly think, if they don't attack the hijackers, then they are dead anyway, so they would have nothing to lose. Indeed that was already demonstrated by the passengers on UA 93, who got word what had happened elsewhere.

That's the way I see it: conflating not receiving an extra £50m with losing £50m.

Tells us plenty of the company's culture I suppose

At the very least, as a gesture to all those extra servicemen who have now been inconvenienced through having leave cancelled, due to G4S's sheer and utter incompetence, the company should fund all-expenses paid holidays for them and their families, to a resort of their choice.

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/14/private-sector-efficiency-deborah-orr?CMP=twt_guThe lie of private sector efficiency[/url

There was an interview with someone (the CEO?) of G4S on radio 4 this morning, he stated this contract was for 270ish million, but would cost them about 310ish.

Mind he also squirmed a lot when asked how they'd managed to bollox things up so comprehensively given they signed the deal close to 3 years ago.

There is a lot of conflicting information appearing in the press over G4S as can be seen in the history of this thread - in this report [urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/14/london-2012-olympic-security-g4s[/url their CEO re-states the position that his company may lose up to £50m on their contract because of penalties while David Cameron blusters in with a statement that companies who fail in their commitments will be persued for refunds and penalties, while seemingly unaware that earlier in the week the Independant reported that the G4S contract did not include penalty clauses but seemed to be structured in a supermarket-style procurement procedure where the Olympic organisers can pay-as-you-go from shelves full of trained security staff.

And now (in that first article) we learn that the CEO of G4S only found out 8 days ago that they weren't able to fulfil the clients requirements.

Its wearing a bit thin as an excuse isn't it ?

Every time a business fails in its basic requirement to provide a service to its customers the CEO pleads that he/she has only just found out yesterday and presumably the day before yesterday thought that they were running a simply wonderful company.

WTF does your average CEO do these days anyway, I know that if I fart in the office my company MD is downstairs with a can of air freshener and an invitation to a disciplinary hearing within minutes.

www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Ou ... 0profiles/ www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Ou ... 0profiles/ I fuçking hate non executive directors. You'd think that with all these accountants they'd have known about a "loss"

www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Ou ... 0profiles/ www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Ou ... 0profiles/ I fuçking hate non executive directors. You'd think that with all these accountants they'd have known about a "loss"

What's also worrying is they don't seem to be doing proper background checks on any of the staff who will be searching bags etc. A terrorist organisation could have it's members hired and let bombs etc into the stadiums.

That is appalling. I used to work a company that managed contracted out services that included penalty fines for not meeting deadlines for issues, down to even the speed at which small maintenance tasks e.g. changing light bulbs, were completed. To not have than in place at the start surely has to be a conscious decision agreed via consultation with G4S. I can't see how a fully trained and experienced group of lawyers would have overlooked this possibility on a contract worth £300m. This means that the government officials who agreed to this at the time must have been aware that this aspect of the contract may not be fulfilled. In which case you are talking willful negligence, a gross misconduct issue in any workplace.

If this report [urlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/cameron-says-g4s-will-be-penalised-for-its-failings-7942379.html[/url in the Indy is to be believed in its entirety then even David Cameron is not yet aware of the scope of the contract with G4S, either that or he is blustering again.

Why would you expect them to do something that requires time and manpower – and thus impinges on their profits?

Indeed, as has been touched on, it's just outrageous that government hasn't scrapped the red tape and allowed them to employ without any checks whatsoever, never mind 'proper' ones. After all, we know that it's exactly that sort of red tape that is the cause of unemployment and is just holding back business and the economy.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18856922Not just the army being brought in, police too[/url

This afternoon's statement by Theresa "and I am not making this up" May, should be interesting. An open goal for the opposition, especially as May apparently has shares in the company that is the major shareholder in G4S

Apologies in advance for linking to a [iDaily Mail[/i piece (from a Ben Goldacre tweet), but [url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174034/London-2012-Olympics-10-room-1-shower-75-people-Inside-slum-camp-Olympic-cleaners.htmlcleaners at the Olympics are being housed in dreadful conditions[/url.

And the government/Locog is struggling to work out [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/3500-soldiers-set-to-bed-down-in-a-prison-warehouse-7945441.htmlwhere to house the extra soldiers too[/url.

Incidentally, even [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/9238712/Olympics-unlikely-to-boost-economy-says-Moodys.htmlMoody's is saying there will be little general economic benefit to the country from the Games, outside of the usual corporate suspects.[/url

The Gtr Manchester Police Federation spokesman wasn't pulling any punches in that article nor in his radio interviews, you'd expect him to have a political bias as he is basically a union leader but he does have a very valid viewpoint in ridiculing the private sector's attempts to replicate what his police force do every day of the week.

On the other hand what do we honestly expect, with all due respect to those who applied for security guarding jobs at G4S for the period of the Olympics, here we have a situation where there is a genuine need for security and where there is the outside possibility that without security there could be attacks on various teams (hello, Munich Olympics anyone ?), and so in a meeting of senior organisers or even politicians at some time during the past seven years, somebody thought it would be adequate to use temporary, short contract employees on minimum wage, many of whom do not hold security credentials and have had to be trained (so we deduce that they've never done the job before) - and its likely that these people have come from either low paid jobs or been taken from the lines of the unemployed, its hardly surprising that many of them have failed to turn up at places of employment this morning - many of us know what its like to be living on a basic income, its quite likely that when told to report to a hotel in manchester that they couldn't afford to get there if transport wasn't available.

Some simple questions need to be asked - what are the terms of their employment and how are they being deployed to the various sites - the very least that the police do is transport their officers to sites properly, and pay them more than £8 an hour to do a serious job.

When will our incompetent Home Secretary (yes, yet another one!) resign?

It's all Labour's fault

If it doesn't Osborne needs a miracle. Suggestions that if things don't improve soon he's out and Hague may be his replacement.

A report commissioned by this current government by PWC a couple of years ago showed that its normal for any economic benefits of any of the modern Olympic games to drop after the Games have finished, which makes sense really, apparently this was very noticeable after the Athens Games - if the current government hopes that any Olympic boost to the economy will continue into quarter four then they are the only ones with such a hope.

Thought some of you may be interested in this. Quote It’s working! Moments after launching the petition calling on companies like McDonald’s to give up their Olympic tax breaks, their rattled PR team were on the phone. [1 Minutes later they publicly confirmed they wouldn’t be taking up the tax dodge. [2 If you didn’t sign the petition because you weren’t sure it would work, now you know it can. It’s an exciting start. But there are lots of other sponsors who still haven’t budged. Let’s turn up the pressure by keeping the petition growing. Every name helps. Can you sign the petition now and tell the other sponsors to pay their fair share? https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/olympic-tax-dodging Next in our sights is Coca-Cola. They’ll be supersizing their profits at the Olympics, expecting to sell 23 million drinks. [3 Together let’s make sure that they’re paying their fair share in tax. Their close relationship with McDonald’s will make dodging the issue even harder for them now. The petition’s already got nearly 100,000 names. If you can help push it past that target we’ll organise a high profile hand-in to Coke’s London headquarters and a simultaneous people-powered flood of messages to them via Facebook and Twitter. Together, we’ll make a splash they can’t ignore! 38 Degrees members have been campaigning against tax dodging because things get cut when businesses don’t pay their fair share. The Olympics is a powerful global symbol. Taking on this particular tax dodge won’t fix the whole problem but it’ll send a strong message that we expect these massive multinationals to do the right thing. If we can get to 100,000 signatures, we’ll organise a hand-in at Coke’s London headquarters this Friday. Click below to add your name now: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/olympic-tax-dodging Thanks for being involved, David T, Robin, Belinda and the 38 Degrees team PS: The secretive nature of these companies’ tax arrangements makes it difficult to figure out exactly how much this Olympic tax dodge is worth. Let’s use people power to shine a light on what they’re up to. Can you call on Coca-Cola to front up? Sign the petition here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/olympic-tax-dodging NOTES [1 Ethical Consumer: The Great Olympic Tax Swindle www.ethicalconsumer.org/commenta ... indle.aspx [2 McDonald’s: Olympic Tax Exemption Clarification www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/About ... ption.html [3 Coca-Cola: What does Coca-Cola’s sponsorship bring to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games? www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/olympic- ... -2012.html'"

Thought some of you may be interested in this. Quote It’s working! Moments after launching the petition calling on companies like McDonald’s to give up their Olympic tax breaks, their rattled PR team were on the phone. [1 Minutes later they publicly confirmed they wouldn’t be taking up the tax dodge. [2 If you didn’t sign the petition because you weren’t sure it would work, now you know it can. It’s an exciting start. But there are lots of other sponsors who still haven’t budged. Let’s turn up the pressure by keeping the petition growing. Every name helps. Can you sign the petition now and tell the other sponsors to pay their fair share? https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/olympic-tax-dodging Next in our sights is Coca-Cola. They’ll be supersizing their profits at the Olympics, expecting to sell 23 million drinks. [3 Together let’s make sure that they’re paying their fair share in tax. Their close relationship with McDonald’s will make dodging the issue even harder for them now. The petition’s already got nearly 100,000 names. If you can help push it past that target we’ll organise a high profile hand-in to Coke’s London headquarters and a simultaneous people-powered flood of messages to them via Facebook and Twitter. Together, we’ll make a splash they can’t ignore! 38 Degrees members have been campaigning against tax dodging because things get cut when businesses don’t pay their fair share. The Olympics is a powerful global symbol. Taking on this particular tax dodge won’t fix the whole problem but it’ll send a strong message that we expect these massive multinationals to do the right thing. If we can get to 100,000 signatures, we’ll organise a hand-in at Coke’s London headquarters this Friday. Click below to add your name now: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/olympic-tax-dodging Thanks for being involved, David T, Robin, Belinda and the 38 Degrees team PS: The secretive nature of these companies’ tax arrangements makes it difficult to figure out exactly how much this Olympic tax dodge is worth. Let’s use people power to shine a light on what they’re up to. Can you call on Coca-Cola to front up? Sign the petition here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/olympic-tax-dodging NOTES [1 Ethical Consumer: The Great Olympic Tax Swindle www.ethicalconsumer.org/commenta ... indle.aspx [2 McDonald’s: Olympic Tax Exemption Clarification www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/About ... ption.html [3 Coca-Cola: What does Coca-Cola’s sponsorship bring to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games? www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/olympic- ... -2012.html'"

Brilliant. We can make a difference.