ALL major sporting events in the modern era, REGARDLESS of the country in which it occurs, has a HUGE amount of protection, both civilian and military, due to the inherit threats to athletes, spectators and other people. Anybody who thinks different are naive at best. (During the last Football World Cup in South Africa, the military had a HUGE presence and a whole combined Operation was occurring to ensure protection to the football stadia, etc.)

I think the UK has gone the WRONG direction of making all the security information public, and the media trying to create sensation by trying to indicate that the presence of military installations etc is a danger to the public. These areas will be so well protected etc - MUCH better than normal. If I was a betting man, I would put money on the fact that the areas directly surrounding the places where the security forces are stationed will have a marked decrease in crime etc during the Olympic Games. Anybody loitering or acting suspicious will be watched with a hawk-eye.

Another problem is the fact that for the vast majority of volunteering jobs during the Olympics, the volunteers have to be British born. (I was not born in the UK - I was not eligible to volunteer). I have over 10 yrs military experience - I would have been more than happy to assist, but apparently I am a risk. The bombers in the 07/07 Tube bombings were all British born and British nationals - apparently less of a risk to UK society than me.

griffin, I think you misunderstood when I talked about the inherent dangers in sport. I am not talking about the dangers involved in the sport itself, but the dangers introduced due to external factors (people) when hosting a major event. It is excellent criminal targets, targets for demonstrations, targets for terrorists. These are definitely NOT artificial, but man-made (pun intended). This is why all major sports events are being protected by security forces world-wide and has been for ages. 20 yrs ago when I was in the military, we were "drafted" to act as basic "security" personnel at large events, even stuff like pop-concerts, and it included men as well as women. This is NOT new.

It is just the paranoid British press and political (not necessarily party politics, but other forms as well) entities trying to use scare tactics etc to try and make people believe that hosting the Olympics is "bad" to promote their own agendas...