Gerald Kaufman may have fired his ex-aide as a result of a simple misapprehension following his piece in the Times suggesting that the Labour Party, with its novel defence policy, was asking the voters to believe six impossible things before breakfast – he might merely have been thinking in terms of the computer world, which is asked to believe scores of impossible things every day: two examples spring from the pages of this week’s Electronic News – Siemens solemnly declares that it intends to build a major worldwide OEM business with its PCD2 AT-alike on the basis of quality and not price (Olivetti offers both and still finds OEM sales an uphill struggle); and the Communications Workers of America seriously wants us to believe that it can persuade a single IBMer to join it or their local trades union by sending all employees in IBM manufacturing plants a shock-horror letter about the health hazards lurking in semiconductor plants, and highlighting IBM’s continuing involvement in the South African market.
