@ Anonymous & Ben

Anonymous - Agree with you there, as far as I can tell, just about any project, IT related or not is almost always fcuked up from start (if they actually do) to end... the point I was making was that defence spending is very poor, not that any other govt projects are any better! :)

Ben - I should have clarified my point. I know EDS/Fujitsu are not British, what I meant to say was I have been at the sharp end of the equipment and systems they send out for the end customers to use and everytime they have, it has been a total joke. Everything is enormously overpriced and under spec'ed. If you are lucky, you might get a something that is 10 years out of date for 10 times the price you could put it together yourself for. Spares are even worse...

This is not to say that only the americans are ripping us off, we can do that very well ourselves..