The very same G4S that is being told to forego its Olympics fee has, as Sloggers already know, been awarded a massive contract to investigate alleged Squaddie misbehaviour in Iraq. However, we’re now told that GrandFourkups (G4S) has taken a whopping share of the £1 billion handed out to private contractors to enable the tagging of criminals.

Hark, I hear you say, is tagging not a good thing? No, it’s not. The Future of Correction, a paper issued by the Think Tank Policy Exchange, says that tagging has massively enriched private suppliers, but has ‘neither cut crime nor provided value for money’.

Even that seemingly straightforward conclusion is illogical. If it hasn’t cut crime, then by definition it represented lousy value for money: in fact, it represents a technical offence under the Sale of Goods & Services Act.

**********************

As his chances of winning the Presidency begin to fade, Mitt Romney is increasingly forced back into the redoubt of all scoundrels, jingoism. If elected, he told a rally in Beverley Hills over the weekend, he would “brand China a currency manipulator”.

There were no further details about the likely effects of such an action, beyond the potential for nuclear exchange. However, were I an apparatchik in the politburo over there, I suspect I’d be drafting an answer along the lines of “Well, at least we only manipulate our own currency”. Towards the end of last year, the US forbade access to the global clearing system to anyone dealing with Iran, as a result of which the Iranian Rial fell some 35% in value.

The Rial is today worth half its value of a year ago. The government has today launched its own forex centre, offering discounted dollars to trading partners, in a bid to offset the problem. I am no friend of Iran, but I think one of his aides needs to get Mitt up to speed on this situation.

***********************

Dan Hannan MEP is facing a Court Martial on charges of retweeting in the face of the enemy. Doctors at the Royal Neurological Hospital are confident that Sir Mervyn King is showing early signs of recovery, and already has some green shoots protruding from his ears. Jeremy Hunt is to launch a specialist range of geriatric care homes for neocon tax exiles, to be called Shady Havens. “The regularity with which such victims clearly cannot remember anything about their tax affairs suggests this is a problem with great potential,” Mr Hunt suggested. And LibDem leader Nick Clegg wants to launch a scheme whereby all those in work over the age of ninety can fund the marketing of their grandchildren in Chinese slave markets. He declared himself truly very really deeply and sincerely sorry that this was the best idea he could come up with.

************************