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Evesham plays Canute to Brown's budget tsunami

by Bob Crabtree on 24 March 2006, 11:00

Tags: Evesham

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He might be at the height of his powers and Prime-Minister-in-waiting but that doesn't mean that Chancellor Gordon Brown will have slept any easier last night.

Just put yourself in his shoes. How could you get a decent zizz knowing that you'd seriously hacked off the PC system builder Evesham Technology?

Kind of frightening, isn't?

The reason why Evesham is peeved is because, as we reported, Wednesday's budget blew out of the water the Department of Trade and Industry's Home Computer Initiatives - schemes that let companies sell PCs to their employees for two-thirds or less of the cost price.

Evesham is one of the bigger firms supporting the initiatives as a supplier and - Sod's Law - had the misfortune to issue a buoyant statement about HCI just a few hours before Gordie pulled the plug!

So, as well as standing to make rather less money than expected, Evesham ended up, post-budget, looking rather silly. Not surprisingly, it struck back.

In a formal statement, it complains that Gordon Brown was, "reneging on previous commitments and disrupting many employers’ plans to deliver productivity benefits to thousands of employees across the UK."

Turning the screw, it says, "The impact of this inexplicable U-turn will be felt by employers, employees and, of course, the many suppliers who have invested in facilities and manpower to deliver the Government’s Home Computing Initiative for the next three years."

Illustrating the company's dismay, business development director Bill Joss is quoted as saying, "It is deeply regrettable that the Chancellor has reversed a commitment which had been widely understood to be in place until 2009, and the effects of this will be felt by many organisations which have geared up to support, what we had been told, was a core Government commitment to enhancing IT skills in the UK workforce. Just when the positive effects of HCi were beginning to be seen clearly, Gordon Brown has pulled the rug from under hundreds of employers and employees across the country. How this action supports the Government’s intent to deliver public services to the community digitally is beyond my comprehension; it recovers a trivial amount of lost tax and impedes IT literacy in the workforce".

More worrying still for the chancellor, the company - playing King Canute to Gordon Brown's tsunami - also says in its formal statement that, "Evesham Technology, as a member of the HCI Alliance will be lobbying the Chancellor to reverse this decision and is seeking clarification as to the “cut-off” rules for current schemes and deliveries."

Who'd be a politician, eh?

Answer that question, or just have your own say, in the HEXUS.community.



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