The notion that it should take 40 million pounds to fix this is just so reflective of the disconnect between the bureaucracy and the people that actually get work done that I probably couldn't think of a better example if I tried.

I can think of a couple ways to make that faster for free. Many dozens more for a lot less than a million pounds, forget 40. Arguments about "but corporate / compliance / vendor contracts / red tape" be damned. (Edit: Most of the replies to this comment are exactly this sort of thinking - It's too complicated, there's too many vendors, we can't do it, it's too hard, no one will do it for free. This is the exact kind of lack of political will to get anything done that I'm talking about. It's someone's existing job to do IT, task them with making it better - plugging in the computers to the wired network is a good free first step. Cleaning up the GPOs so Windows login doesn't take 60 seconds (!) is another freebie. Yes, these systems are complicated. That's not an excuse for them to be garbage).

The decadence of IT spend is horrifying. I suspect most of it winds up lining someone's pocket.