[Sussex] LINUX in this thread!

[The ol' tealeg]

On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:08:13 -0000
"Mark Harrison" <mark.harrison at ekingfisher.com> wrote:

> It's why being an MP doesn't attract the best people!

Frankly only two types of people enter politics:

- Those who want to make the world a better place
- Those who desire power

Those in the first category don't care about the money, those in the
second make money elsewhere.  The current system possibly transforms the
former into the latter.  As I said, I'd pay them a lot more if they
could be guaranteed not to come under the influence of big business.

IN the last 14 months I've written to my local MP, Rt Hon. N. S0 at M3S
(Conservative) three times, on three different matters:

1/ The RIP act

2/ The government favouring large US companies with no specifc
skills in Portal Technologies (Microsoft) over market leading British
companies specialising in Government Portal Technology without putting
the business out to tender as dictated by EU law.

3/ Uneccessary Government expeniditure on IT (Re: NHS / EDS /
Exchange).  THis is where I query the use of Exchange (which they are
only going to use as a mail server, not as a Calendar or shared folder
server) on Windows 2000 over say LINUX and Sendmail/Exim/Postfix -
answers on a postcard please.

In each case I have recieved a response that states that it is basically
not Mr. Soames remit to deal with I.T. issues.  In the third case he
went so far as to say that it was "Irresponsible to recommend free
software as it was in opposition to free market economics and thus
anti to his parties principles".

Never mind that 12% of the public sector expenditure is now going in
Licensing and Consultancy costs, or that our government overrode the
NHS's IT management in order that the NHS should buy upgrades to Windows
XP for every PC and that an Exchange server should be put in (at great
expense by EDS) for ever 50 members of NHS staff - even though Bill
Gates personally gave his pall Tony a 60% discount on Microsoft software
this deal is still equivalent to 22% of the penny on income tax we'll
all be paying extra this year.

I'm in favour of increasing taxation, but I have two caveats:

1. Bug businesses should pay the same level of tax they did 20 years ago
- the reason the burdon on you and I is greater now, is not because a
greater percentage of us are unemployed or claiming benefits, it's
because businesses pay a lot less than they used to into our society.
The next time I hear a CBI representative complaining about how
hard done by business in Britain is I'm going to ask him why it's
alright for him/her to cream money out of our pension funds when the
stock exchange is booming, but it suddenly becomes the governments, and
the employees fault when that money isn't there when the stock exchange
falls.

2.That money should be spent responsibly.

The first person who can give me a benefit to the NHS of upgrading all
the PC's they have to Windows XP (which is commonly accepted as valid by
all members of the LUG) wins a pint from me at the next meet.

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk 
tealeg at member.fsf.org
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-- 

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