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Microsoft faces claims it threatened MPs with job cuts in constituencies

Posted by BernardSwiss on · 6 comments
The Guardian; By Rowena Mason 		Mail this story
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Microsoft executives telephoned Conservative MPs threatening to shut down a facility in their local area because of planned IT reforms, David Cameron’s former strategy chief has claimed. Steve Hilton, who worked for Cameron in opposition and for two years in Downing Street, made the allegation as he argued the dominance of corporate lobbying in the UK was leading to bad policy-making...

... Another former Downing Street aide, Rohan Silva, appears to have given a similar account of lobbying by Microsoft in relation to open source software, in comments reported by Computer Weekly. Silva told a conference: “A day or two before we were going to give a speech, a couple of backbench MPs called the office – they said Microsoft had called them saying if we went ahead with the speech on open standards, open architecture and open source, they would cut spending or maybe close research and development centres in the constituencies of the MPs they had called.

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Comments (6)

montezuma ·
the Brits standing up to the slothful giant MS. Now if only this could happen more generally and in DC as well. One would hope that in a democracy the best ideas would take precedence........Naive I know.
seatex ·
Once corporations can start threatening government officials, you have REAL problems. Yes, of course we have the same in the US.
nmset ·
With less earnings, MS is bound to cut costs, that's not blameful from a managerial point of view. It remains to see how much the govt. can absord of those laid by.
DrGeoffrey ·
Much like political corruption, the first step to redress this problem is shining a light on it.
albinard ·
@seatex: In the US, corporations don't need to threaten government officials - they already own them.
seatex ·
>albinard - Very True.

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