THE city of Atlanta has always marketed itself with slogans. The City That's Too Busy to Hate metamorphosed in the I980s to The World's Next Great International City. By the first Sunday in August, Atlanta may be known worldwide as The City Which Bit Off More Than It Could Chew.

The glitches, as the unbearably cheery organisers insist on calling the screw ups and organisational deficiencies which have plagues these games, have reached a critical level. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) gets its knuckles rapped by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) daily. A fresh torrent of press releases promising better things tomorrow are issued daily.

Daily the system moves nearer to total breakdown.

The Australian delegation has started to hire its own buses. British rowers have moved out of the Olympic village to be nearer Lake Lanier because they can't trust the buses to get them there. Irish archer Keith Hanlon headed off to see the archery venue the other day. Three hours of bus queues and major rows followed.

Not of course that the athletes are whining the loudest. That privilege belongs to the journalists. Rightly so, too. Last Saturday an Aussie scribbler boarded our bus down at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Centre. After too many hours in the sun, perhaps, his head was filled with insurrection.

"It's happened goys," he shouted, breaking the first rule of thumb among communications pros by communicating. "Goys, goys, it's happened. They've had to postpone a US baseball game because of the buses."

We cheered like schoolchildren getting a surprise half day. Had we been wearing caps we would have tossed them in the air. Suddenly, mob like, we asked the driver if we could be dropped off at the main press centre, which we would be passing presently, instead of being taken to the media transportation mall from where we would all be taking buses back to the main press, centre.

The suggestion went down like a stripogram at a funeral. Tempers flared. The traffic was gnarled, almost grid locked. The driver refused to open the door to liberate the irate backs to the sanctuary of the main press centre. Fifty minutes later we arrived at the transportation mall from where we had to track back as one to the MPC.

Spectators at these Games swap little pins with each other so that they might bring home some of the international flavour of the event. Journalists swap bus stories. I met a man from Ghana who has a notebook full of them. He was thrilled to hear of the Irish journalist who attempted to get to Lake Lanier to see the rowing but whose efforts were stymied when the bus driver announced that she was afraid to drive the bus on the freeway.

In exchange, he offered the tale of the bus full of journalists stuck in traffic and heading towards the aquatic centre. Their driver, getting increasingly agitated, jumped up and announced that he had to have his daughter at piano lessons in half an hour. After a quick goodbye, he got off and into a cab going the opposite direction.

Much griping, belly aching and moaning too from the broadcasting people for whom the IBM computer system has been a disaster. It is difficult enough for print backs when the results of events don't come through for three or four hours, but the folks with the cameras and mikes are so upset they are looking for their money back. The EBU and the Japanese agencies have sent letters of complaint to, ACOG and are threatening to seek partial refunds of fees paid for broadcast rights.

The Japanese spokesman Yosuke Fujiwara personalised the issue when he announced that they would like a refund "at least as big as Billy Payne's annual income". Payne, the head of ACOG, earns $669,112 per annum.

IBM, meanwhile, have sent a letter of apology to clients and must be reflecting ruefully on the quality of publicity which their $40 million sponsorship bought them.

At least they bought something. Delegations of vendors and local business people descend on the ACOG offices to protest about the revenue flowing into Atlanta being kept in the hands of the few at the cost of many. Black business people, who work out of the historic Auburn Avenue area, claim that tourists are being told that the street is dangerous. Whatever they are being told, they are not going down there.

As if all those embarrassments weren't sufficient, it emerged yesterday that a man armed with a gun and a knife managed to get inside the Olympic stadium for the opening ceremony last Friday night. "I would not sit here and say that this is a good example of our security," said Bill Rathburn ACOG security director.

Bill is eight. The best example of security can be found at the main press centre where the airport like metal detector is situated just a yard inside the door from the street. The revolving door that is. Every time somebody causes the buzzer to go off, or has to open their laptop computer to prove that it isn't a bomb, a journalist gets trapped in one of the segments of the revolving door. Atlanta is hot, butt the revolving door segments are like saunas.

Somebody is going to die in the revolving door one of these days. Another glitch.