The Cars That Ate Paris

If you don't think we're in a mess - you haven't been listening. 2 weeks to go and the company paid £260 odd million to supply security staff for the Olympics owns up that it won't be able to do it.  2 weeks to go and Heathrow resembles a refugee camp in sub - Saharan Africa. 2 weeks before we all text and blog and phone and tweet about the Olympics - the mobile network O2 goes down.

What is going on? We, or more correctly the ruling classes, political and corporate, are going into melt-down. That's not the half of it. We have banks run by people who don't know what's going on. We have regulators who seem helpless to enforce even the mildest regulation on these monsters of greed and guile.

I have no time for the Olympics: it is a perversion, a corruption of a noble ideal - although I, and most of the world have forgotten what that was. The latest wheeze that has got my goat is Sainsbury's offering tickets for the Para-Olympics "a last opportunity" if you spent £50. Sod it, if I want a ticket I'll buy one from the ticket office - except much of the allocation has been snapped up by the corporate blood suckers.

But, even I would want to see a well run event. Professional, well trained staff ensuring that where possible no suicidal jihadi would explode themselves at the start of the 100 metres, Usain Bolt's left severed right leg setting a new world record just ahead of his head. Or, if at all feasible, immigration staff knowing what a passport looks like, and thereby saving innocent, fun loving visitors to our shores the ignominy of having to stand in a queue for upwards of 4 hours.

How the hell can a minister stand up on their hind legs and with a straight face say that only in the last 2 weeks did they know that the company paid millions to recruit and train security staff have fucked up. Two weeks before the Games which we've been preparing for for 7 years, and we have to a call in the calvary. What have officials been doing?

It's the same with the banks, lots of highly paid officials with lots of explanations for why they are best placed to know what's best  have totally lost it. "It's a cesspit" the words of the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. Well thanks for that fine clinical analysis of the state of the financial markets. You've only just found that out?

I'm beginning to feel sorry for David Cameron. He must know that he's a one term Prime Minister - it's all spinning away from him. If it's not the banks, it's the Olympics or the queues or the House of Lords or the press or the economy or his friends.

Frankly, he must now realise that winning the 2010 election was the best thing he could have done for Labour. How that must sting.