Why?

I have been avidly watching the "CUTS".

I have worked for smaller companies, such as one which turned over around £10m p.a., where the IT hardware budget was £3k. Yes, a year. You can buy a heck of a lot with that. We never needed to go over budget, and that included supplies such as laser toners.

I have worked for medium-sized companies. Ones whose turnover was around £100m p.a. In those, the IT hardware budget was more than ten times that of the smaller ones. A heck of a lot more. In the order of £3m. Because you HAD to have "servers" (a server in this context is a PC, for those who think they know differently). You had to have dual redundant PSUs and RAID and all sorts of other cock which mainly didn't work. And spares. And they HAD to come from huge companies, because they did, that's all. And of course they had to be at least 64-bit because 64 is bigger than 32. Even though most programs only ran on 32-bit and ran slower on 64, because they did. And all IT hardware last for two years and then it goes bang. It does.

I have worked for huge companies. Billions of pounds. £xbn. The IT hardware budget in these companies would pay for a decent-sized battleship plus crew and well-stocked bar. Really.

So, what's the analogy? Well, this. Everything I'm hearing has the word "cost" in it.

Here are some examples:

• A battleship costs £x
• A mobility scooter costs £x
• It costs £x to house a family of four
• It costs £x to bring up a child
• It costs £x to provide a bowl of rice to an African goat

That sort of cost.

And here is what is so, so wrong.

It doesn't. It costs what you are prepared to pay. If a submarine, you know, a common or garden one, that can carry a Trident, costs £23,000,000,000, that's what it costs. If company X makes such a submarine, and nobody else really does that sort of submarine, someone will pay that. Especially if it isn't their money.

But in a smaller company, someone, such as I, will ask "how much?". And it will then cost a lot less. A LOT.

So, peoples, NO. I would love to take the piss and charge what I like. But I can't, because I don't sell to idiots. If I tried it on, I would be dumped, and someone else would jump in.

Wake up. That is all.