Well, I’ve managed to do some digging …
And managed to find — right here — the details of Mr Pickles ‘state of the art’ laptop.
It’s a Lenovo …
Ah HEM!!
Just so you know, that’s the Chinese company that had been the PC arm of IBM; at least, until it got bought out, a few years ago.
And one that I’ve not heard much about, in its modern incarnation; although in its original form, both IBM as much as Apple did a lot to popularise home computer use. But a company known — as far as I can see — for doing a workmanlike, rather than an innovative job
That cost him £869•50p
Hardly the £7, 500 that the Gazette were claiming.
What did seemingly cost a packet, was the unspecified software from Limelight Software; although, apparently, the domain registration they supplied didn’t cost much, the software they supplied cost £1065•25p.
I’m also going to point out that the public purse also paid Limelight £500 in consultancy fees, on Mr P’s behalf.
And, on top of that, there was also £1, 169•13p paid to Qunique, the company that supplied the laptop, for a document scanner kit*. Now while I realise that there’s specialised kit for scanning in books, scrolls, large sized images and whatever else, I can’t see Eric Pickles needing such a thing.
It does raise questions. For a start, why does he — or any other MP — should need much more than a all in one printer-scanner-copier*? Costing anywhere from about £70, to about £250ish.
And what was the £1069 worth of software? The various claim forms lodged with the Fees Office have large areas of black ink.
Mr Pickles says he has nothing to hide.
The claims forms seem to say otherwise.
* I’m no expert. But this, to me, looks the sort of large scale semi-pro industrial kit I’d’ve expected Miss Vix — who did so much of the artwork for my pub quiz posters — to want to use. It looks the sort of price I’d be expecting an artist to pay for a piece of kit enabling them to digitise large-sized (up to A2, which she was capable of doing) images, when they needed them to be transfer to a website.
