2009/10/6 Francis Davey <[email protected]>: > 2009/10/6 Matthew Cain <[email protected]>: >> There's a significant distinction between advising the government of the day >> (regardless of which party is in power) and advising a political party. >> > > As I said, this must be some political nuance I'm missing because I > don't see it. Sorry. Surely advising people on IT and having a sane > policy is a good thing. I'd be happy to advise the Tories on anything > I knew about because it would mean they were a better and more > effective political party, that in turn can only be good for everyone. > I struggle to see how telling people what is a good thing to do can > ever be bad.
I can see the argument for eg a civil servant. Civil servants are supposed to be apolitical; they advise their political masters through their jobs; they are paid from the public purse to do this job. If they were to advise an opposition party, they would be seen to be political in this action, and if they did it on public paid time, it would surely be wrong and a disciplinary matter. However, AFAIK Tom is not a civil servant; he is not being paid by the Tories (and so has no immediate financial interest in seeing the Tories win), and frankly, although one can infer that the Tories may have more influence over Tom than they did before, I think it is more important that they get good, sane IT advice than it is that Tom be protected from ever meeting a politician. > Surely no-one cares *who* is in power provided they do the right thing? Sadly, this is clearly not the case. I know people who would always hate on a Labour/Tory/Lib dem government no matter what they did. (See Obama in the US for a prominent example.) Phil _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
