With remarkable prescience, candour and realism Winston Churchill announced to the world in a BBC broadcast in the first month of the Second World War, 1 October 1939, that “Directions have been given by the government for a war lasting at least 3 years.”
If Churchill’s speech had been informed then by some of those who brief ministers today on the feasibility of IT-based projects - and he had believed that advice - his speech might have not have been so candid, realistic or prescient: “Directions have been given by the government for a war lasting three months, or possibly less, in which the benefits will greatly exceed the costs. There will, of course, be no risk to public safety.”
