Interesting data

• Print

Details

Created: Tuesday, 17 July 2012 13:25

Published: Tuesday, 17 July 2012 13:25

Written by The Guardian, with comments by Colin Sumner

Hits: 2013

Twitter

The answers given by the G4S boss who is responsible for the massive screw-up over security for the Olympics are so unbelievable that they are hugely revealing of the attitude of the corporate elite in this country who have no problems fleecing the state even when they are providing little 'service' for their vast remuneration. The whole exchange reveals too how incompetent the government is at contracting out key tasks that should be allocated to well-paid and well-trained professionals, not barely paid semi-literates off the street with little experience of security and with little English.

Yet again, we are faced with the fundamental question of our age: has capitalism proved itself to be completely unethical and shameless? We might add more questions: have politicians failed to understand the huge costs, financial, political, constitutional and moral in cutting back the public sector? Is the whole ideology of 'the business model' now revealed as hugely unreliable and overrated as a means of public service delivery, and indeed merely a mask for what used to be called corruption? Can we afford to keep cutting back public services only to replace them with more expensive crap versions of them? Do public-private finance initiatives amount to a way of enriching the already rich and their political friends?

G4S boss questioned by MPs over Olympic security: Politics live blog