Simon Carr: May dodges the £284m G4S question
Hunt looked like a gaunt migrant worker who needs a third job to make ends meet
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Your support makes all the difference.They were going to supply 17,000, but now G4S are offering 13,000, but when 54 were needed in Tyneside – Nick Brown told the Commons – only 10 turned up. They can't even muster a cricket team. And who knows if they weren't illegal Somalians, a colonel in al-Qa'ida, two escapees from Broadmoor with a machete in their tracksuits and Baron Sacha Cohen doing a mockumentary? This is in spite of the fact that they have 20,000 people accredited to do this sort of work.
Maybe they count a pregnant woman as two accreditations and the Olympic security force actually consists of 5,000 heavily pregnant women carrying triplets.
A Labour member asked this urgent question. What is the precise number of security personnel G4S will be providing?
Everyone was delighted with the Home Secretary's answer. "The precise number will become clear."
May I call back that 20,000 figure from the top of the column. I thought she said that, but then Meg Hillier said 9,000 were still being processed. And ... maybe you just have to pay MUCH CLOSER ATTENTION.
Yvette Cooper revved up that dentist drill of a voice and made everyone think how lovely she is when she stops speaking. Jeremy Hunt sat supportively beside the Home Secretary. It really takes it out of you having your integrity impugned; he was such a nice young man but has gone gaunt, like a migrant worker from Eastern Europe who needs a third job to make ends meet. I know: Olympic security guard!
Theresa herself sailed through, causing happy laughter more than once. "They did not deceive the Government, they assured us they ..." The rest being drowned out. She also gives gasps of amused disbelief when people asked the wrong (that is, hostile) question.
But the biggest laugh of the day went to Nick Clegg at his re-re-re-re-launch in Birmingham. "We need to put short-term popularity to one side." Brave strategy, brilliantly executed.
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