Oh, Mr Pickles!

Hang on, HOW much did Eric Pickles — Conservative MP for Brentwood — spend on a laptop??

I’m quite happy to accept the Gazette’s story at face value; although with a LARGE pinch of salt. We are, after all, dealing with a politician, and that craves wary walking, to quote the Bard.

But £7,500 on a ‘state of the art’ laptop? That’s either a very high spec machine or includes the repair bills on a Windoze based PC.

Because I’m willing to bet that it’s a Windoze machine; contrary to the various statements from George Osbourne about the Conservative party supporting various open source projects.

At any rate, here’s the quick letter I shot off to the Gazette about it …

“Dear Sir,

So Mr Pickles has spent £7, 500 on a ‘state of the art’ laptop? What did he get, the MacBookPro with all the bells and whistles?

I’m also willing to bet that — contrary to the recommendations of his party about open source software — he’s got a laptop with a proprietary operating system.

Now I’ve long been recommending to my friends that they use open source free software; things like Firefox and Open Office are the familiar examples. In fact, Bristol City Council managed to save themselves £1, 000, 000, a few years back, by switching from Microsoft Office to StarOffice, the version of Open Office offered by Sun Microsystems; something I know I’ve informed Brentwood Council of, in a recent spate of emails.

But there’s also many free and usable open source operating systems; things like Ubuntu linux, which I’ve recently help a friend to install on his three year old laptop.

These days, every penny counts. These days, the Telegraph is publishing seemingly every MPs expenses from the rooftop’s.

Given both that and his party’s stated support for open source software, Eric Pickles could’ve saved himself a minimum of £109•42p by using Ubuntu instead of Windows Vista Home Premium and at least £91•29p on the relevant version of Microsoft Office, by downloading Open Office. At least, going by the prices on Amazon.”

Deary deary me …