getting through the proxy with sudo !

Problem : command line errors when executing commands with sudo even though http_proxy is correctly set.

Solution :

It's a problem with sudo. If you use sudo, the variable $http_proxy is unknown in this context.
sudo -i opens up a root shell. There you can set the $http_proxy variable again and then easy_install works - you don't have to use sudo because you are already superuser.

$ sudo -i
# export http_proxy=your proxy here... 

So for access to the outside world from UWE : 

export http_proxy=http://proxysg.uwe.ac.uk:8080