Olympic Update 4: It’s all Under Control, People

With just ten days until the London Olympics is due to begin, we can all relax in the knowledge that everything is under control. Completely under control. A small issue regarding security has come up recently, but this is nothing that can not be resolved with the deployment of 3,500 army personnel; an estimated £50m from G4S’s petty cash tin to pay for them; an immense party of open-armed police officers; a huge amount of finger-pointing, recrimination, side-stepping, evading, the repeated use of the word ‘regret’, and eventual apologising.

Two of London's finest prepare to welcome Olympic visitors

 

Not so much of a problem then, more of a minor glitch. There are bound to be a few wrinkles to iron out of the Olympic tapestry before we hang it on the wall and tell the world to look at (but not touch) it, are there not?  So calm down everyone. We can all take heart from Nick Buckles, G4S’s big chief boss man, who assured MPs that everything is sweet as a nut, despite it being a ‘humiliating shambles’. So sweet is it, in fact, that Mr Buckles has stated his intent to keep the £57m management fee as payment for G4s’s expected delivery of ‘a significant amount of staff’, with any luck. See?

Even David Cameron himself is not at all worried about G4S’s tiny shortfall. One of his spokesmen (he could not personally make a statement earlier as he was too busy being unperturbed by the Olympics security situation, if you can even call it a situation) stated that

"We need to focus on working with G4S to ensure a safe and secure Games. We have confidence we have plans to deliver a secure Olympics."

They have confidence they have plans to ensure the safety of the world’s citizens. Now there’s a solid, definite statement of intent, if ever I heard one. Any remaining fears over safety should simply evaporate like smoke from a home-made bomb. Anyway, we can always rely on the domicile-mounted missiles if all else fails.

Furthermore, we can be completely confident that the vast majority of Olympians will probably get to the Olympic village in good time for their events. One overly fussy American athlete, Kerron Clemet, Twitter-whinged that his bus took four hours to reach the Olympic village in Stratford from Heathrow Airport. A four hour bus journey from the airport does sound a little excessive, but Stratford is a whopping twenty-five miles away from Heathrow, and driving in London has the effect of dog years compared to driving in the rest of the country. Anyway, he got there in the end, didn’t he? This didn’t stop him moaning though: “Not a good first impression of London,” he Twittered sulkily. As he will be spending the majority of his time in Stratford, it could be argued that this first impression of London was a skillfully executed exercise in managing expectations.

Stratford town centre yesterday

 

Still, if London’s road system does prove to be horrendously inadequate in coping with the colossal numbers of people that will be expecting to use it (and it won’t), at least we can rely on the Tube.

Oh, and there is a small human rights issue that a few trouble makers are storming in a teacup about, but I am assured by an Olympic mafia Committee insider that the vast majority of people affected are foreign.

So there you have it, my friends. It’s all under control.