LOL

One more point

If the main political parties would just grow up we could have a National Infrastructure Planning Board. It would be independent like the Bank Of England and would have responsibility for future planning across all major sectors like water, gas, electricity, railways etc.

So regardless of who was in power they would commit to following the plan, maybe they would be quicker or slower than another party but they would not be unravelling previous work just because it was the other party.

Political parties don't do long term planning I get that so recognise that and leave it to a non partisan body.

No chance of this ever happening though it's all knee-jerk and headline grabbing.

Edited by Badger11 (15 Nov 2019 8.13am)

One more point

Not so sure. Labour has to get out younger voters if it is to stand any chance. This is the kind of bribe, and let's be honest about what it is, that might grab their attention given how much of their lives are spent online these days. I reckon there might be a something similar touted about mobile phone data at some stage soon. Not sure how might word that one but shiny tech presents have an impact.

Credit where it is due, Labour might have a hook here.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

Bit surprised Labour haven't got better, less risky things to spend our money on.

I now that it's trendy nowadays to sport several days of stubble but Len McCuskey being interviewed last night looked more like a dirty tramp with his unshaven face.

100%

The Voice of Reason In An Otherwise Mediocre World

If it was just the Broadband I might take it seriously.

The Labour party are taking lying to Olympic Gold level standards.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Any party in power will need to conform to this. Changing guard will make no difference. It's a directive adopted from the London Plan, which has set house building targets for every borough totalling 64,935 homes a year for the next 15 to 20 years.

And as Croydon is more or less the largest borough in London, there's plenty of space. However, the planning department need to take some lessons from what was done this year in Goldsmith Street, Norwich.

Plus, you'll have to wait for the Council elections to do this anyway. Not a general election. Majority of 10, plus the bumbling they've been doing lately could indeed mean a bit more of a swing back to the yah yahs. But they'll still have to deliver 46,040 homes by 2039.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

Fair comment an imaginative suggestion so you can't be a politician.

One more point

Sorry I'm not sure how this then pays for fibre to be installed to every household in the UK.

If you mean the money paid by corporations gets funnelled into a fund that then pays for the network to be upgraded to every home, then I suppose that could work. Although I'd be interested to know the percentage of people that work from home more than 3 days a week, which would probably be the qualifier to get free or subsidised internet and or devices. Most medium to large corporates supply free of subsidised mobile hardware and data to their employees anyway so that is nothing new. You'd also have a hard time convincing SMEs to sign up to this as it would hammer their growth potential.

Not every business operates in a way that supports WFH en masse. The zenith of this approach has already been and gone – there are extensive studies around frequent WFH actually being a negative rather than a positive, for fairly obvious reasons.

The irony here is that it's the same socialist approach, just implemented in a less workable way.

Spending 80bn on free fibre broadband to everyone is mental. Spending 15bn ensuring everyone has the potential to access fibre is more sensible. If you wanted to go further on reducing price for people there then make it means tested, although that comes with an admin nightmare.

And to those saying 'Just spend it all on 5G' – the phone companies already do this, just not to low priority areas. Or not for a long time after it's been turned on in cities. Add additional 5G infrastructure on top of that 15bn fibre everywhere plan. You need a mix of both as it's going to be a while until as a society we are able to become fully reliant on currently unstable, and low bandwidth (when compared with wired connections) wireless data transfer.

Additional funding to close the gap on Fibre + 5G installation would be expensive, but more practical than Labours free internet plan and nowhere near 80bn. Ideologically it's sound, i.e. internet access is increasingly becoming close to an essential human right, but financially it just doesn't make sense.

Edited by SW19 CPFC (15 Nov 2019 4.41pm)

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.