George And The Fantasy World Of Tory Economics
- February 03 2010, 09:36
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David Ross, co founder of Carphone Warehouse and close pal of David Cameron is one of the few that stand to benefit from Tory plans to deliver superfast broadband if elected.
George Osborne announced plans this week for the UK to be the first major European country to have speeds of up to 100 megabits per second. George plans to achieve this by ending BT’s monopoly of the local loop and allowing private investors access to pay for better cabling and encourage competition. And if this doesn’t work they will use Licence Fee cash currently used to pay for digital switchover to pay for the expansion.
Financial secretary to the Treasury Stephen Timms has said on Media Guardian that “the Tories are playing catch up. Labour has already announced measures for rolling out broadband across the country – and the Tories have opposed the plans to make that happen”. Don Foster, Lib Dem culture media and sport spokesman also pitches in describing the announcement as an example of “the fantasy world of Tory economics”.
The Tories cite the success of this approach in countries such as Singapore and South Korea as justification and the effect on the economy will be huge, comparable with the railways and motorways on their respective eras. However the Aca-Demy’s is becoming a bit weary with the recent trend of using the BBC’s licence fee as a silver bullet to wrong all ills in Britain’s modern communications landscape. Furthermore the worrying prospect of public money being used to line the pockets of Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB and Tory donors such as David Ross does not sit well. Or maybe this is an over reaction on the part of the author and a price worth paying if it means we can watch yet another selection of funny cat clips on You Tube, quite possibly in 3D in ‘the future’.
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