Brown wouldn't let No.10 buy copies of Office

Paul Waugh has highlighted something from Sir David Omand's evidence to the Iraq enquiry. Sir David was the former Cabinet Office Chief and has said that the Treasury restricted the Cabinet office budget, at times "we were struggling to find money to buy Microsoft Office"

To be fair Office is quite an expensive product, and back then they probably couldn't just pull the latest version off of Pirate Bay!

What's interesting is what else he said:
"The Treasury kept us - I think, I expect quite deliberately - on a very tight leash in order to restrain the growth of Downing Street." Obviously in this you should read Treasury as Gordon Brown and Downing Street as Tony Blair.

Following on from the revelations from Peter Watt about Brown's secret slush fund of Labour Party money to oust Blair, it really does look like Brown was spending less time running the country's finances and more time plotting. Perhaps that explains why we're in the state we are now.

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