Great news that PrintWeek's petition to the government over access to tenders has resulted in a positive response, though as usual the wheels of administration do seem to grind exceptionally slowly.

If the 2008 Glover Report was supposed to address the various concerns of SMEs in relation to tendering, why will it take until the second quarter of next year (if we're lucky) for these recommendations to actually be implemented? Perhaps the government machine is too busy ordering stationery and signage to reflect the new name for what was the DTI, which briefly became the DPEI, then BERR and is now BIS incorporating the DIUS. Good grief. Such vacillations at least generate a lot of printing, it would just be nice if our SMEs could get a sniff at it.

Through the government's response it was also interesting to learn that there's an e-learning course available online through Learndirect, "winning the contract". This course costs £49.99 and is being re-evaluated to "determine whether it is considered to provide value-for-money to businesses". Have any PrintWeek readers invested £50 in said course, and if so what is their verdict?

A further noteworthy point about government procurement was raised in a recent letter to The Guardian, the letter's author James Alexander resurrected a century-old recommendation originally made by the great financier JP Morgan. This being that the boss-to-worker pay gap in firms bidding for government work should be no greater than 20:1. Apparently the FTSE average in 2007 was 66:1, or pretty much 100:1 if total packages are taken into account. What think ye to that? Perhaps such a stricture would stop people taking the BIS.