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UK's Labor Party Promises Free Fiber Broadband For All, Paid For By Taxing Tech Companies (bbc.com) 139

Only 7% of the U.K. has access to full-fiber broadband, according to the country's telecommunications regulator. But now long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: With a General Election next month the UK's Labour Party has promised to give every home and business in the UK free full-fibre broadband by 2030. The party would nationalise OpenReach, which owns the existing copper network, to deliver the policy and introduce a tax on tech giants to help pay for it. The plan will cost £20 billion, but the opposition Conservative Party is promising to bring fibre to every home by 2025 for just £5 billion in partnership with industry.

Either way the UK's ageing, slow broadband infrastructure may be getting an upgrade.

The party claims it would "literally eliminate bills for millions of people across the UK," according to the BBC, with the Labor party's shadow chancellor telling them that companies like Apple and Google "should pay their way and other countries are following suit."
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UK's Labor Party Promises Free Fiber Broadband For All, Paid For By Taxing Tech Companies

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  • Standard (Score:2, Insightful)

    by motd2k ( 1675286 )
    FREESTUFF!
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Elect ME, and I will take someone else's money and give it to you.

      Why is it that the Slashdot "editors" keep promoting this garbage? Are they really THIS stupid, or is BizX decreeing it?
      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Yeah, that's as bad as borrowing from future generations to pay off current generations to get elected now.

    • Re:Standard (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @08:56PM (#59424484) Homepage

      User pays is not equal to free stuff. The tech corporations profit by internet infrastructure, whilst cheating en masse via tax havens and corrupt countries cheating with licence fees. They should pay taxes, so start taxing the fuckers. Perhaps a bandwidth tax, so no tax a residential levels of bandwidth but bloody big taxes as tech company data mining levels of bandwidth. USER PAYS.

  • Sounds great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @10:40AM (#59422736)
    Until you remember the godawful nationalised telephone system that Britain used to suffer under. I don't see a nationalised broadband being any better in that regard. It'll have terrible customer service, terrible actual service and be dominated by unions who'd have the country by the balls. While a national infrastructure isn't a bad idea per se, it has to have incentives for the operator and workers to actually do their jobs and do them properly.

    Not that I think it stands a chance of happening. Labour are so far up their own asses right now thanks to Corbyn that they can't even beat a deeply unpopular minority government.

    • Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Insightful)

      by polar red ( 215081 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @10:50AM (#59422760)

      While a national infrastructure

      like roads ?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by wilsong ( 322379 )
        Nationalised roads in the UK are as awful as nationalised British Telecom used to be. Roads run with an incentive to get commuters from point-to-point with minimum delay would be a huge improvement.
        • You have no idea how densely populated the UK is.Building lots of new private roads would mean knocking down lots of buildings and no one is interested in making the investment, For example the new highspeed rail link between London and Birmingham, Manchester is going to cost £78 Billion. That is about five times the cost of a similar rail network in a less populated country. Roads are remarkably well maintained considering that we have just spent 10 years in austerity because of the banking crisis, I

      • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @10:55AM (#59422784) Homepage Journal

        Sure, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have they ever done for us?

        • Ok, bravo. If I had mod points you'd have them now. I'm going to borrow this line for all my "But Socialism" friends.
          • Thanks. I just thought of that line myself. I haven't had mod points since 2003, but if I did I would would myself up.

          • GP suggests that public schools do a better job than private schools. That waiting 16 weeks (four months) to see a specialist in the govt healthcare system is better than a next-day appointment in the private system. That till roads will never get you there faster.

            Just curious, are you a fan of guano for fertilizer? Because that post is bat shit crazy.

            • GP suggests that public schools

              This is a thread about the UK. In the UK, public schools are very expensive, very posh private schools.State schools are the ones run by the state.

            • you really, really need to lay off the Fox News Brand (tm) Kool-Aid. People in the UK & Canada don't wait to see specialists, public schools _are_ better (look into the abuses of charter schools, where they either throw kids out for C-B grades instead of, well, teaching them or worse where they just plain _don't_ teach them because they're after a fast buck).

              You're just wrong. You'd think on a science forum like /. you'd be too embarrassed to be so wrong. When did we just give up evidence in exchang
              • > People in the UK & Canada don't wait to see specialists

                According to the NHS's own records they sure do.

                --
                The committeeâ(TM)s report found that less than half of NHS trusts and foundation trusts currently met the 18 week waiting time standard for treatment, and only 38% met the 62 day standard from referral to treatment for cancer patients.
                --
                https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l4... [doi.org]

                > you really, really need to lay off the Fox News Brand (tm) Kool-Aid

                You think NHS is lying to make themselves look ba

                • And the answer is what? To get rid of the NHS and make everyone pay? Nah thanks, I'd rather take the NHS every single fucking moment of every day over what the US has right now - sure, you get immediate care, but you also get immediate bills and problems with people not being able to afford treatments. I'd much rather take the NHS over that shit fest.

                  The US system works for the rich, it doesn't work for the poor - that much is obvious to anyone who cares to take even the briefest of looks at it.

                  • > And the answer is what?

                    That's the $100 billion question, isn't it. I don't have the full answer. There are a lot of different things that can be done to improve things. Pretending that the VA model, or the US insurance model, or the UK NHS model is just grand is definitely NOT a solution.

                    Without writing a 150-page book about things that could improve healthcare, let me just say that anyone who says they have the one magic answer to it all is wrong (or lying). There are a lot of problems, which requ

                  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • by cas2000 ( 148703 )

                  Here is the thing, bro. People actually die from this shit. Mother's, father's, kids. This is more important than rooting for your team in a political popularity contest

                  Yeah, that's why I'm glad I live in a country with a decent public health system. Public health systems don't have private insurance death panels deciding who lives and who dies.

                  Over the last 20 years, I've had over 10 major operations (including two transplants - the first one failed after 6 years), a few smaller operations, about 8 years

            • The measurements are wrong. If not enough money is spent on public schools because only the poor attend them and we don't need to spend money on the poor then your schools are of course shit, if your middle class had to attend them then enough money would be spent on them for a good education to result. If your appointment with the specialist does not save your life then you have wasted your money.and American life expectancy is falling (despite the ease with which the drugs companies spend your insurance

            • Your "16-week" wait for a specialist appointment entirely depends on specific circumstances - for example, a cancer initial diagnosis by your GP will get you a cancer specialist appointment within 2 weeks and into full treatment soon after.

              Yes, you might wait 16 weeks for a hip replacement, but you aren't going to die from that.

              I'd rather wait for a non-life threatening appointment than have to bankrupt myself with private health costs thanks - thats an aspect of the US system that is often smoothed over by

              • > - for example, a cancer initial diagnosis by your GP will get you a cancer specialist appointment within 2 weeks and into full treatment soon after.

                Except that now you know that according the NHS, they 62% of the time they do NOT get you an appointment with 2 weeks. They are *supposed to*, most of the time they don't.

                Kinda like the VA wasn't supposed to destroy records so that nobody found out that the dead guy had asked for an appointment four months ago, but they did.

                • by Cederic ( 9623 )

                  Well, that's because the NHS is overwhelmed by demand.

                  That isn't an issue with the NHS, that's an issue with two decades of excessive immigration (and also an issue with horrific inefficiency that the unions prevent anybody from fixing).

                  • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

                    I know of several people in the recent past that have been diagnosed with cancer in the UK. In all cases once the diagnosis was made treatment started promptly. There can be delays with diagnosis but that is because often the symptoms presented are likely to be something else. You don't for example assume because you have a cough that it is lung cancer and rush for a chest xray immediately. Only if the cough persists would you go for a chest xray hence a delay in diagnosis. This will be true whether you liv

          • I wonder if you realize those things exist not because of socialism. Socialism is Government ownership and/or administration of production [merriam-webster.com]. Think North Korea, Mao's China, current-day Venezuela, Cuba. Those great things listed above exist because of a Capitalist economy (as all the Nordic nations enjoy [wikipedia.org]), and the collective will of the people is to use taxes to pay for such things as roads and public schools and fire/police. A socialist economy will simply destroy those items, as it destroys the GDP - an
            • right? Go do some googling. Get out of the Fox News / Ben Shapiro / Jordan Peterson bubble created for you by the ruling class. Start with Beau of the Fifth Column and Robert Reich. When you've graduated from that try Contrapoints, Secular Talk and The Liberal Redneck. Finally graduate to Status Coup & TYT (good journalism both even if they are a little annoying) and Thought Slime.
              • So, you dispute Merriam Webster's definition of Socialism? You dispute what the Danes themselves call themselves [thelocal.dk]? You get to decide what socialism is, and no one else? Really?

                If socialism is such a great economic model - please point to a country with a socialist economy. Go ahead.

        • I was just watching a Youtube video of an attorney I like who does videos on legal issues. As part of a funny courthouse story, but mentioned that he went to see his doctor one afternoon. His GP said he wanted a specialist to check something out, so he referred him to see the specialist in the morning. He went in to see the specialist, who said surgery would be needed, so they scheduled surgery for that afternoon. He mentioned this because it led to something happening in court the next day.

          The guideline

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            If you are rich you can pay to be seen immediately in the UK. There are private hospitals.

            UK government medicine - you get treated, even if it can take some time
            USA private medicine - you spend all your money, go bankrupt and die anyway

            • > USA private medicine - you spend all your money, go bankrupt and die anyway

              Sorry to hear that you're bankrupt and dead.
              The $10 copay hasn't bankrupted me yet. I think I'm still alive.

            • The US has a better survival rate than the UK for all cancers.
              The US has a better survival rate than the UK for all heart diseases.
              The US has a better survival rate than the UK for all traumatic injuries.
              The US has a better survival rate than the UK for all chronic diseases.

              In fact, the post-surgery death rate for the UK is somewhere between 4 and 10 times [theguardian.com] what it is in the US, and the primary reason is that the US provides treatment sooner, when the disease is less severe.

              So, in the UK, you might get seen,

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                Actually the UK does better with some types of cancer.

                https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.... [nuffieldtrust.org.uk]

                It's fairly comparable to the US for the most part, and behind other European countries.

                Can't be bothered to debug the rest if you couldn't be bothered to check the first one or provide any citations.

          • by Kjella ( 173770 )

            His GP said he wanted a specialist to check something out, so he referred him to see the specialist in the morning. He went in to see the specialist, who said surgery would be needed, so they scheduled surgery for that afternoon. He mentioned this because it led to something happening in court the next day.

            Sounds like a whole lot of idle capacity if you ask me, that's convenient but usually expensive. In a universal healthcare system you generally don't have to worry that a competitor will steal your "business", so they tend to operate with a line long enough that all slots are filled and that it's operating close to maximum economic efficiency. Of course it's dangerous to generalize from one anecdote, it could be that for medical reasons it was that urgent or one late cancellation or that they had enough fr

            • > Sounds like a whole lot of idle capacity if you ask me, that's convenient but usually expensive

              That's an interesting thought. There is actually a whole discipline around that called queuing theory. As it turns out, having a long line doesn't actually decrease costs at all compared to 1-2 days. It would if and only if most cancer cases were diagnosed all once - if there were such a thing as cancer season. It actually INCREASES costs to have longer lines.

              In the US, a medium-sized city will have about

    • from private companies that have the country by the balls?

      To be fair I'm yank, so I don't know how your ISPs are, but in my neck of the woods they're among the most reviled companies in the country.

      Also not sure about your pricing structure. Here in the States we pay $100-$160/mo for broadband if you don't want strict data caps (1 terabyte/mo, which goes fast if you're streaming).

      By the way, why _is_ the left in the UK such a cluster fuck? In the States our billionaires spend literally billions
      • In UK it depends a little on where you live but in any urban/suburban area you have a wide choice of ISPs and can typically choose from Cable to ADSL to FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet). In lots of towns and cities you can choose full fibre. It's competitive, hence good value.

        In rural area it can be really shitty though, with unreliable slow ADSL being the only option while costing similar to urban dwellers' high speed fibre.

        I live in a big town/small city and pay the equivalent of US $30 monthly for FTTC with

        • by DrXym ( 126579 )
          Exactly. Competition drives technology forward and there is a lot of choices as to what provider you choose. If you can't get cable or don't want to then there are other options. And if one provider sucks, you can switch.

          It's very hard to compete with "free" which is basically the proposition of a national broadband. What would happen instead is that all the other services would go bust and the only service remaining would stagnate and become awful. Of course it's not free at all since it's paid through t

          • as it sounds very different, but in the US the broadband providers have repeatedly been given monopolies in exchange for promising to do rural broadband and then just plain didn't do it. Nobody calls them on it, and they just bribe a few politicians with campaign cash and get away with it. It's been like this for decades, going back to pre-internet days and into just plain old phone lines, where rural lines are often barely usable and running on stuff from the 30s.
            • by DrXym ( 126579 )
              That's the problem with monopolies in general. When you don't have a choice, then there is no pressure on the operator to compete and the service goes to shit. Private operators are no better than public ones even if the reasons for it happening may differ.
      • by DrXym ( 126579 )
        I wasn't suggesting a free for all either. Broadband is infrastructure and governments could easily sell licences to operators that require them to abide by certain standards, coverage etc. or risk fines or forfeiture.

        The problem with Labour at the moment is they are so hard left that they couldn't possibly countenance anything that involved private or semi-private companies. They're trying to outright nationalise things, conveniently forgetting how thoroughly awful most nationalised services traditionall

      • Don't know where you live, but I have AT&T, Spectrum, Verizon, and a host of independents. I get 200 Mbps down/40 Mbps up (reliably - based on speed tests) for $50 per month. No data cap. I wonder if you live in one of those great Socialist US areas like the Bay area, or NYC? At least here in Ventura County, CA we have quite affordable choices...
        • but I still have zero competition. There's technically DSL but by all accounts it just doesn't work. So it's cable or nothing and I need it for work so they can soak me.
          • You should probably talk with your local municipality, and see what kind of restrictions they're placing on new options... Unless you either live way out in the country, or right in the heart of an older city in an apartment (where wiring/electricals just can't get updated), you're probably being restricted by your local Government, not private business.
      • By the way, why _is_ the left in the UK such a cluster fuck?

        Hard to know. I mean partly it's that the Labour party has a very low membership fee and suddenly got swamped by Corbynites who seem to have taken over the party and who put a massive dickhead in (Corbyn). the right is also a total clusterfuck too with Boris "fuck business" Johnson as PM and liar in chief and Rees-Mogg as leader of the house who seems intent on dragging Britain back to the 1850s, and into some ludicrous isolationist state. I don't

      • Dunno where you're getting that price from. I'm paying $60/month for AT&T fiber (to the modem) w/ no caps/limits.

        And which Billionares are you talking about...the Kochs? We'll...I'll take the Kochs and raise you Bloomberg, Steyer, Soros, etc... Hint, there are a lot more on the left then the right.

    • Until you remember the godawful nationalised telephone system that Britain used to suffer under.

      Implying it got better? Public. Private. It makes no difference. Internet in the UK is a national disgrace both in the country and in the city centre.

  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @10:42AM (#59422742) Homepage Journal

    I don't understand why this is needed. Elon Musk's Starlink system will be up and running before they even start the paperwork and will provide global access for all.

    • Internet costs very little to provide, but it's value is so immense that when we leave it in the hands of private companies they charge through the nose for it. That puts it out of the reach of the working poor, who are exactly the sorts we want to have access to unlimited information to better their lives.

      One of the dirty little secrets of capitalism is that it can be more profitable to sell less of a product. If I've got a million customers at $1/mo vs a 100k at $100/mo I'm going to go with the latter
      • Starlink's filings imply that they will charge $60/mo per subscriber, based on their expected number of customers, and expected profit.

        Exede, their closest competitor in the USA anyway, starts at $80. And it maxes out at 20 Mbps, streaming video is throttled hard, and Viasat being in GEO means there's about a second of latency in the round trip.

        Assuming the filings bear any relation to reality, Starlink is going to be a phenomenal value.

        • My Internet costs $42/month. 76Mbits down 20Mbits up with a 250Gb limit.
          Why would I move to Starlink?

          • My Internet costs $42/month. 76Mbits down 20Mbits up with a 250Gb limit.

            31.25 gigabytes? That's pretty pathetic.

            Why would I move to Starlink?

            This isn't about you. Literally the only kind of service I can get where I am is satellite. I can't even get POTS.

            • Where did I say that I get less than 250Gb Download? I never mentioned 31.25Gbytes. I have 0.25Tbytes download limit.
              Most months I never go over 30Gbytes. I don't stream anything.

              The post I replied to seemed to suggest that Starlink would be the saviour and make Broadband as historic as the Steam Engine.
              It won't. If anything 5G is more of a threat. Not that I can get 4G at home.

              • Where did I say that I get less than 250Gb Download? I never mentioned 31.25Gbytes.

                Someone whose nickname is "RotateLeftByte" should probably be aware that Gb = gigabits and GB = gigabytes.

          • You could burn through that in 7 hours at 76 Mb/s. I can't imagine you meant terabytes, but maybe you did. If not is this mobile?
    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @12:01PM (#59422932) Homepage Journal

      A few reasons.

      The government wants this service to be free. It sees broadband as adding value to the country in the same way that roads to. People can get government services, education and more, and companies can offer new services like streaming that don't work over low speed, high latency connections.

      It would be madness to have an American for-profit company be the provider of that service.

      Starlink is also unproven and won't be able to provide high speed, low latency connections to everyone. The laws of physics cannot be altered, the round-trip-time cannot be lowed beyond the speed of radio waves or light. Since the service is shared and there is only so much bandwidth available within the allocated bands it won't be able to provide everyone with gigabit+ connections.

      • The government wants this service to be free.

        The government wants no such thing. The people promising this want to get elected, nothing more, nothing less. Their opposition are also promising unicorns, and both sides know there won't be a cent to pay for any of the promises when the UK leaves the EU and they stop staring into the economic abyss they've been standing on the side of ready to jump.

        There are no good policies being proposed in these elections. No realistic budgets. No plans for what will happen on the 31st January or beyond. You're talking

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @12:45PM (#59423020)

      I don't understand why this is needed.

      Because they are coming up to an election. Don't be ignorant enough to believe this will actually be implemented.

    • Will starlink be free to use? no, of course it won't.

    • by Cederic ( 9623 )

      There are multiple facets to this.

      - poor provision of broadband in rural locations, where people tend not to vote for the Labour party, so this might entice a few votes their way.

      - bribing the electorate, giving away free stuff. Of course, they don't mention that the costs will rise in the form of general taxation, that service levels will plummet, that the unions will leech away any potential benefits or indeed that people's pension funds will collapse due to the forced switch from shares in profitable com

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @10:48AM (#59422754)

    The Tech Companies will raise their prices to cover the increased taxes.

    • What prices? Google is free.

      • Everything eventually makes it to the consumer.

        Google charges companies for their advertising platform.

        If Google is taxed more, they will increase their advertising service cost and pass that on to companies using it.

        Companies will then increase the cost of their consumer products and services so they can pay the higher advertising costs.

    • The Tech Companies will raise their prices to cover the increased taxes.

      The Labor Party has a plan for that . . . they're going to nationalize The Tech Companies, as well.

    • The Tech Companies will raise their prices to cover the increased taxes.

      Raise prices, lower wages or reduce return on investment, those are the three options companies have when taxed... and unless there's simply no way to do one of the first two, they never do the third. This isn't specific to tech companies, it's all companies. Well, there's a fourth option: lobby for reductions or loopholes, i.e. regulatory capture.

      This story perfectly illustrates something I harp on pretty regularly: Corporate taxes are not just wrong-headed, they're evil. Taxes are never ultimately p

      • Raise prices, lower wages or reduce return on investment, those are the three options companies have when taxed... and unless there's simply no way to do one of the first two, they never do the third. This isn't specific to tech companies, it's all companies. Well, there's a fourth option: lobby for reductions or loopholes, i.e. regulatory capture.

        This story perfectly illustrates something I harp on pretty regularly: Corporate taxes are not just wrong-headed, they're evil. Taxes are never ultimately paid by businesses, they're always reallocated to individuals some way or other. This means that business taxes are always actually borne by individual taxpayers, but it's the corporations who get to decide how to allocate them.

        At least in the United States corporate taxes are levied on PROFITS after expenses. If a corporation was being taxed in a way that meant choosing between paying employees or raising prices to cover tax burden that would be one thing and in that case I would tend to agree with many of your conclusions. Yet this isn't actually what's happening.

        If a corporation doesn't want to be taxed they could direct their profits to expansion, new equipment, charity or big fat bonuses for all of their employees. A numbe

    • there is _intense_ competition in tech. And they mostly sell veblen goods at the higher margins (e.g. Apple iPhone, Microsoft's expensive Surface Pro, etc). Finally stagnant and declining wages mean there isn't a lot of room for price increases.

      If raising taxes always raised prices we never would have made it out of the dark ages. Economies grow, and when they do we can and should take some of that growth to spend on universally valuable projects. That includes roads, schools, healthcare and yes, Intern
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How much does Facebook charge users for it's service? Last time I checked it was free.

      Those bastards are tax dodgers. They should be paying far more tax in the UK. Companies that can't offshore their profits are at a competitive disadvantage.

      If they increase prices then fair enough. They were operating below cost and gaining an unfair competitive advantage.

  • by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Sunday November 17, 2019 @10:55AM (#59422782) Homepage

    The parties are making wild promises and trying to bribe us with our own money.

    • Worse. They are doing so knowing full well the entire economy is about to be flushed down the metaphorical toilet. All signs point to an upcoming recession sponsored by the national stupidity that is Brexit. They are bribing you with your own money knowing fully well neither you nor they will actually have any of it.

  • Not "China"?!
  • by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @11:13AM (#59422828) Journal
    Actually it is the "Labour Party". "Labour" is part of their name and you don't change the spelling of proper nouns.
  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Sunday November 17, 2019 @11:20AM (#59422842)

    Even in the US, where any state ownership of anything is Soviet-era communism to some people, infrastructure monopolies can work. We don't have 17 sets of power lines going to each street, or cable coax, or old-school copper phone lines. Telecom is a bad example in the US given he history but electric, water and gas work well even when people aren't able to choose their providers.

    Splitting the network responsibility between a commonly-owned company for physical plant maintenance and service providers for customer-facing stuff is a good compromise. As long as service providers can make a profit, and the maintainer company can make enough in usage fees and taxes to keep everything running well, it works. Having it state-owned means that we don't see what we see in the US with phone companies abandoning their requirements to maintain universal service. Phone companies don't want to spend the money to lay and maintain fiber to remote rural areas because they can't make enough money off a small number of customers doing so. Recently, RBOCs like Frontier Communications and whatever's left of the regional Bell companies after their re-mergers have come under a lot of scrutiny for providing below-par service. This is what happens when you have a for-profit company running things -- they'll just cut and cut until they're called out on not living up to the deal they made to be a monopoly provider in an area.

    An IT example would be one of the big outsourcing companies coming in. After firing the in-house IT department, their job is to do the absolute minimum work necessary at the cheapest cost to avoid breaking the contract they have with their company. At the same time, everything that isn't in the contract is a change order and is done on a massively inflated time and materials basis. Everything grinds to a halt for a few years until a new CIO comes in and starts the insource cycle. This has been going on for at least 25 years and I wonder when people will realize it's a bad idea. Infrastructure takes a lot longer to go through this cycle.

  • Like so many promises made by Politicians hoping to get elected.

    Their promises need to be funded. Sadly the Labor party seem to think that there is an evergreen money tree at the bottom of their leader's Allotment.

    • Sadly the Labor party seem to think that there is an evergreen money tree at the bottom of their leader's Allotment.

      They do indeed. Unfortunately the Tories seem to be intent on out-spending Labour. Fuck business, right?

  • Britain is one of the most surveilled places on the planet (the US and China are probably both ahead today, though.) Of course they want people on a nationalized ISP, imagine the data collection possibilities.

    I'm still generally for it as there are ways to subvert such tracking, and the value to society of universal internet access is significant, but it's surprising when governments don't do such things.

  • Most parties go into elections promising the world, usually on the back of a big spending spree. This is the first one I can remember where parties promise this spending spree while at the same time having a policy of driving the country into recession.

    They will tax tech companies? What companies? They are pulling out of the UK in droves.

    • They will tax tech companies? What companies? They are pulling out of the UK in droves.

      Oh that explains the mass of tower block building going on around King's Cross. They're building towerblocks then will leave them as an empty monument to how they won't work there.

  • They're going to raise taxes on more than just tech companies.
    Also, currently there is 95% broadband penetration in the UK with a satisfaction rating of roughly 80%.

    So who're they ACTUALLY doing this for?

    Also, in the end, nationalizing internet connectivity?
    What happens if you have "the wrong opinions"?
    Does your internet get cut off?

    • What are they doing this for? Many nations have dreamed of having a federalized communications network carrying all private and public traffic. "Billing the tech companies" to fund the technology _and the bureaucracy to manage it_ is somewhat of a twist. The UK have a history of handling utilities as a national service, such as the NHS and the BBC, both funded by taxes. (The BBC is funded by the "telivision license", which is in every legal sense a tax.)

      • by Chas ( 5144 )

        It's Labor.
        They think the promise of "Free Shit" will draw people to their crumbling party.

        And again, if you nationalize people's internet connection, it becomes yet another avenue of control and a means of violating privacy.

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