Wednesday 17 November 2010

Public/Private false dichotomy

A colleague was telling me of someone he knew who works in the software industry, and has been to sporting events with drinks receptions by taxi with invited guests all on expenses. One of the events was sponsored by Microsoft. Is this supposed to be OK because it's private sector? Alond with private individuals and organisations, public sector organisations buy Microsoft software and therefore some taxpayers' money is going into champagne for well-paid and well entertained software geeks. I'm not asking why the public sector shold have beanos as well, just that the idea of the public sector doing anything like this would be anathema, but it's the same people paying and the same money - the attributes 'private' and 'public' sector are minor differences.

I'm not dmgling out Microsoft for criticism - it just so happens they were the company in this case. I don't know how much they spend on such things compared to other organisations.

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