{"id":4159,"date":"2012-07-19T11:01:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T15:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=4159"},"modified":"2012-07-19T11:01:04","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T15:01:04","slug":"london-olympics-spends-10000-on-each-security-guards-uniform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/19\/london-olympics-spends-10000-on-each-security-guards-uniform\/","title":{"rendered":"London Olympics spends $10,000 on each security guard’s uniform"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/2012\/jul\/19\/olympic-games-g4s-bill<\/a>\u00a0is sort of a fun article if you do some arithmetic on what the British are spending on one facet of security at the London Olympics. There were supposed to be 10,000 guards and the cost of their uniforms was 65 million pounds or roughly $10,200 per guard. In the best tradition of an ossified bureaucratic moribund society, more money is allocated to management (125 million pounds) than labor (83 million pounds). Overall, had things worked out as planned\/hoped, the British would have spent $446 million (enough to have financed 15 Googles) to have 10,000 minimally trained security guards work for the 17-day event. That works out to $44,600 per guard or $2,623 per guard per day. As it happens, though, the contractor wasn’t able to supply the 10,000 guards, many of them could not speak English, and many were unable to stay awake during their minimal training. So the cost per actual guard may be closer to $100,000.<\/p>\n

[The guards themselves don’t receive this $100,000, of course. \u00a0They receive roughly $13.30 per hour, according to this article<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/2012\/jul\/19\/olympic-games-g4s-bill\u00a0is sort of a fun article if you do some arithmetic on what the British are spending on one facet of security at the London Olympics. There were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLondon Olympics spends $10,000 on each security guard's uniform - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/19\/london-olympics-spends-10000-on-each-security-guards-uniform\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"London Olympics spends $10,000 on each security guard's uniform - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/2012\/jul\/19\/olympic-games-g4s-bill\u00a0is sort of a fun article if you do some arithmetic on what the British are spending on one facet of security at the London Olympics. 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