Tag Archives: broadband

Is this the trigger that will get young people interested in politics at last?

Connection lost: apparently a million people in the UK have cut their broadband connection to save money as the cost-of-living crisis bites. What will young people do, deprived of their escape from the harsh truth of life here in the 2020s?

If as many as one million people in the UK have cut off their broadband connections due to the cost-of-living crisis, does it mean disaffected young people are being deprived of their distractions?

A few days ago, in a different article, This Writer mentioned a friend who is a father, and who deplored young people’s refusal to engage in politics.

He said he saw little that interested the young apart from YouTube shorts and TikTok; anything lasting more than 15 seconds bored them, and they had no interest in society because they feel that society has taken everything that makes life worth living away from them.

So they distract themselves with Internet-based escapism.

And then this happens:

As many as one million people in the UK may have cut off their broadband due to the cost-of-living crisis.

It comes after Citizens Advice, a network of charities helping people with legal, debt and consumer advice, warned that mobile and broadband prices could rise by up to 17% this year.

The charity said its survey showed broadband … was becoming out of reach for greater numbers of households.

This should be exactly the kind of prompt that young people need.

They are losing their Internet connection because of government decisions that have pushed prices through the roof.

That alone should demonstrate to young people that just because they aren’t interested in politics, politicians aren’t going to leave them alone.

That’s if anybody actually stops to explain it to them.

And, presumably, if that explanation can be made in less than 15 seconds.

Source: One million in UK ‘switch off broadband due to cost of living crisis’

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Never mind the Budget: you’ll be paying a lot more in April with less cash

Brace yourself for another attack on your wallet.

Even if you receive benefits that are going to be uprated in line with the lowest possible level of inflation the government thinks it can get away with, it probably won’t cover the increases in your costs.

Rises to the different level of the minimum wage certainly won’t. It’s not a living wage, despite being called that by Tories.

Let’s have a look at what’s coming:

Council tax to rise

The majority of households in England will be hit by a whopping 5% in April in fresh cost of living misery for families. Three struggling councils have been given special permission by the Government to impose higher rises – up to 10% for Thurrock and Slough, and an eye-watering 15% for Croydon.

Band D properties will pay around an extra £100 if they don’t receive any discounts.

Water bills to increase

From April, average water bills will again increase by less than inflation, meaning prices will continue their decade-long fall in real terms. Bills will rise by an average of £31 to £448 a year (equivalent to around 60p more each week)

Support for low-income households is also being increased to its highest level ever. More than 1 million households already receive help with water bills, which is being increased to 1.2 million over coming months.

Wages will increase

The National Living Wage and National Minimum wage will rise for all kinds of workers across the country. Depending on your age and work status, you will receive one of the following increases:

  • National Living Wage – Increased to £10.42 (annual increase of 9.7 per cent)

  • 21-22-year-old rate – Increased to £10.18 (annual increase of 10.9 per cent)

  • 18-20-year-old rate – Increased to £7.49 (annual increase of 9.7 per cent)

  • 16-17-year-old rate – Increased to £5.28 (annual increase of 9.7 per cent)

  • Apprentice Rate – Increased to £5.28 (annual increase of 9.7 per cent)

  • Accommodation Offset – Increased to £9.10 (annual increase of 4.6 per cent)

Broadband and mobile bills will increase

From April, broadband and mobile phone customers can expect to face monthly bill increases of at least 14% from April.

Providers link their annual price rises to January’s consumer price index (CPI) or the retail price index (RPI) which was 10.5% and 13.4%. BT, EE, Plusnet and Vodafone broadband contracts allow prices to go up by CPI plus 3.9%. At TalkTalk, it is CPI plus 3.7%, while Shell Energy can add CPI plus 3%. Sky and Virgin Media contracts allow mid-contract price increases but they do not stipulate a pricing formula in the same way as rivals.

Universal Credit, PIP and pension to increase

Inflation-linked benefits and tax credits will rise by 10.1% from April 2023, in line with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rate of inflation in September 2022. Jeremy Hunt said the ‘expensive commitment’ worth £11 billion means 10 million working-age families will see a much-needed increase next year and, on average, a family on universal credit will benefit next year by around £600.

The benefit cap will rise from £23,000 to £25,323 for families in Greater London and from £20,000 to £22,020 for families nationally. Lower caps for single households without children will rise from £15,410 to £16,967 in Greater London and from £13,400 to £14,753 nationally.

Benefits which will rise by 10.1% include Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, Pension Credit, Disability Allowance and Personal Independence Payment.

Source: Cost of Living: 5 big changes coming into effect in April that everyone should know about

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Why is it okay for Labour to pledge cheap broadband now, when making it FREE under Corbyn was ‘communism’?

Keir Starmer online: his broadband usage is subsidised by his publicly-funded expenses claim, one expects.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is tying itself in knots again:

A Labour government would enforce a cheap broadband tariff for low-income families as well as taking action on mid-contract price hikes, the shadow culture secretary will announce.

Labour will say broadband is an essential utility and that figures from the regulator Ofcom show almost a third of households (8 million) are having problems paying their broadband, phone and streaming bills. That is double the number a year ago.

In a policy launched on Thursday, Labour will say there must be an industry-wide social tariff for low-income families, negotiated by industry players such as Openreach, which runs the UK’s broadband network, with Ofcom and consumer groups.

The party will say that a failure to agree a tariff would mean a Labour government setting one and legislating to enforce it.

Universal credit claimants can already qualify for some heavily discounted broadband deals from some providers but the schemes are not well publicised or understood. There is no requirement for telecoms providers to offer social tariffs for broadband products.

Labour analysis suggests customers who are eligible for a social tariff could save an average of £250.32 a year.

The party has said it will also reverse changes that now allow wholesale broadband prices to rise with the rate of inflation, rather than costs, meaning that providers have had a £1.7bn windfall.

So Jeremy Corbyn was right – again – but Starmer’s cronies, being right-wing profit-grubbers, want to make sure someone can still make a fast buck out of the rest of us.

So they say the poorest of us may have cheap broadband (because that way the providers will at least get something from people who have next to nothing) – and the rest can pay the full whack.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves got short shrift when she tried to big up the policy:

Damo is right.

If broadband is a modern necessity, then it should be provided by the state, in the same way that necessities like water, power, and public transport should be run by the state.

That’s what the Labour Party should stand for but Starmer’s crew doesn’t. That’s why they are such a poor alternative even to the Tories under Liz Truss.

Source: Labour pledges cheap broadband tariff for low-income families | Broadband | The Guardian

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Williamson’s failures on home learning expose Tory policy stupidity on ‘Broadband Communism’

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson may be acting “to the utmost of his ability”, but so was Frank Spencer – the calamitous comedy character with whom Williamson has been compared.

If this inspires confidence in you, then you’re not thinking hard enough:

Saying the prime minister thinks Gavin Williamson is being Education Secretary “to the utmost of his ability” is not the same as saying he has “full confidence” in him.

Williamson has far too many mistakes in his recent history for any member of the public to have full confidence in him, let alone any school pupil.

Only yesterday he admitted that his Covid-19-related failures – in both policy and practice – have made it impossible to hold GCSE, AS and A level exams this year:

Perhaps you don’t grasp the enormity of the admission from what he said. Labour’s shadow Education Secretary, Kate Green, made it clear that she holds him to blame for the chaos in the education system.

The reason Williamson has cancelled the exams is that the Covid-19 crisis – and its effect on schools – has made it impossible to ensure that pupils across the UK have been educated to an equivalent standard.

The reasons for the uneven standards include the fact that teachers have been unable to plan their lessons properly due to Williamson’s unfortunate habit of announcing that schools will stay open no matter what – and then closing them.

Also, he was supposed to provide laptops to pupils, in order to ensure that they could carry on learning to an acceptable standard even if they were confined to their homes. He didn’t (or at least, he didn’t provide enough).

This has now necessitated children without laptops being added to the “vulnerable” list of youngsters who have to go to school during lockdown, alongside the kids of key workers. This amounts to another example of class warfare – kids without laptops are likely to be poor, and sending them to school exposes them to the most common vector for transmission of the killer virus:

Finally, there’s the fact that some families don’t have access to the broadband internet connections necessary to experience this kind of home learning.

The Tories now agree with Labour that this is a good idea – but it is too late to implement it in time to help this year’s crop of exam-takers.

Let us remind ourselves of the reaction – from the Tories and the mass media – when the Labour Party proposed free broadband across the UK in the run-up to the 2019 general election:

Who was right?

John McDonnell and Labour, of course (Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, that is. Kate Green, while being right about Gavin Williamson, also said that schools should stay open. That’s the lunacy of the party under Keir Starmer for you)).

If that party had been elected, free broadband would have been brought to the UK, school pupils would have been able not only to do their homework but to carry out distance learning, preparing them for their exams which would not have had to be cancelled – and it would have helped adults to work from home as well, which would have been a great help to a great many people during lockdown, as well.

That’s the problem with silly Tory ideological incompetence.

Their failure to accept the wisdom of free broadband, and their failure to equip school pupils for home learning, means Williamson has been forced to cancel exams because pupils are not well-enough educated.

As a result, the UK’s workforce will be less competitive in the world marketplace in the future, when compared with other countries that were better-prepared and more willing to help everybody in their populations, rather than just the very rich.

So when we look at the malady afflicting the UK’s education system under the Conservatives, during the Covid-19 crisis, we can see one thing clearly:

Williamson is a symptom of the illness. Conservative government is the cause.

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The perfect scam: We will pay higher broadband bills so the government can spy on us

This is beyond the pale.

Not only is the government planning to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to spy on all their clients, but ministers are offering to provide only a fraction of the cost.

This means the vast majority of the financial burden will fall on Internet users. Our broadband bills will increase – possibly pricing many of us out of the market.

Those who are left will be paying for the government to spy on them. It is perhaps the greatest insult that a government can inflict upon its internet-using citizens.

Worse still, if the cost of broadband increases, there will be no guarantee that the terrorists the Snoopers’ Charter – sorry, the Investigatory Powers Bill – are intended to catch will even use the internet after the new prices have been set.

This legislation is expensive, insulting and pointless – much like the government.

Consumers’ broadband bills will have to go up if the investigatory powers bill is passed due to the “massive cost” of implementation, MPs have been warned.

Internet service providers (ISP) told a Commons select committee that the legislation, commonly known as the snooper’s charter, does not properly acknowledge the “sheer quantity” of data generated by a typical internet user, nor the basic difficulty of distinguishing between content and metadata.

As a result, the cost of implementing plans to make ISPs store communications data for up to 12 months are likely to be far in excess of the £175m the government has budgeted for the task, said Matthew Hare, the chief executive of ISP Gigaclear.

Hare and James Blessing, the chair of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), also warned the science and technology committee on Tuesday of the technical challenges the government would face in implementing the bill.

Source: Broadband bills will have to increase to pay for snooper’s charter, MPs are warned | Technology | The Guardian

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Tory Democrats on Europe: Confused and negative campaigning

Negative campaigning at its worst: It's what the Liberal - or is it Tory? - Democrats do best.

Negative campaigning at its worst: It’s what the Liberal – or is it Tory? – Democrats do best.

If you thought the Tory manifesto was a deceitful joke, or the row over UKIP’s policies was damaging, have you seen what the Liberal (?) Democrats have been sending around?

Here’s a letter sent to houses here in Brecon and Radnorshire. It starts with the famous Lib Dem block graph, which is a mainstay of all their election communications in places where they have won seats. Presumably they keep using it because it is effective but one has to doubt this example, as it does not feature a European election result, but that of the last UK general election in 2010.

They cannot use a block graph to show a favourable result in the last European election because they don’t have any Welsh MEPs, and the result in the last Welsh Assembly election (in 2011) showed support was already eroding away as a result of their toxic alliance with the Conservative Party in Westminster, along with some spectacularly effective campaigning by the local Labour Party.

The result is a misleading graphic that shows a massive Liberal Democrat majority, coupled with the slogan, “Only the Lib Dems can beat the Tories here”, where in fact we have two Labour MEPs, one Tory and one representing Plaid Cymru.

It hardly encourages confidence when a political letter – from one of the ruling parties in Westminster – begins with a filthy lie.

The text of the letter, by the constituency’s Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams, asks where the reader wants to be working in five or 10 years, and suggests we will be looking for more pay, promotions and a better quality of life. He states that it is important to protect the economic recovery, but “all that hard work could be undone” if Britain pulls out of the EU “as UKIP and many Conservatives want to do”.

Thanks to the UK’s Coalition government, ordinary hard-working people are receiving far less pay than before the 2010 election, with a corresponding drop in quality of life. Child poverty, for example, is rising fast. The economic recovery has helped nobody but the very top earners (like those in the Sunday Times ‘rich list’, published last weekend) – and besides, the Tory Democrats are not the only party keen to protect Britain’s place in Europe. For that, your best bet is still Labour or (in Wales) Plaid Cymru.

The letter continues: “Across rural Wales the EU has invested £5.8 million into local businesses struggling to find funding to grow and create more jobs, this is on top of the £26 million invested in promoting tourism to Wales which is vital to our local economy.” Yes indeed – but that money was negotiated by either a Labour government in Westminster or a Labour government in Cardiff Bay. It has little to do with the Tory Democrats!

The letter ends with an exhortation to vote for the Yellow Party’s nonentity candidate, whose name is instantly forgettable.

Alongside this came a double-sided flier offering more of what the Tory Democrats do best – negative campaigning. “Don’t gamble with Welsh jobs…” it states, “Stop UKIP and the Tories from risking Wales jobs”. A box-out with a red background says, “Labour stay silent” – which is a blatant falsehood.

Flip the page and you’ve got the pro-Tory Democrat bit – but they can only say they have “helped deliver” funding for superfast broadband, funding for small-to-medium-sized enterprises, and cash to support tourism. And who did they help?

Labour!

It’s a sad little screed from an organisation in its twilight days.

The saddest part is that someone will believe it.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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Zones of growth – thoughts on how to improve Mid Wales’ economy

Many of you may be aware of the proposal to create ‘Growth Zones’ in Powys – at Brecon, Llandrindod Wells and Newtown – roughly equivalent to the new Enterprise Zones created by the government elsewhere in the UK. My opinion is that these are a good idea. The Welsh Government has put out a call for evidence on the proposal and information can be found on its website here.

Unfortunately, the deadline for entries is June 1. I’m writing this on May 28 so, if you want to make a submission, you need to act fast!

What follows is my own submission. I want people to see what I’ve put forward because I think it might help them in shaping their own thoughts. I’m not saying it’s perfect because I hope others will have different or better ideas; I’m putting it up in the hope that it will stimulate your imagination, and the Welsh Government will get better submissions as a result.

I would also appreciate your comments and suggestions – just use the form at the bottom.

Here’s my submission:

All three possible locations must be able to compete with the Enterprise Zones that have already been announced, therefore the features common to all of those should be included here. These include: Government support to ensure super-fast broadband, achieved through guaranteeing the most supportive environment and, if necessary, public funding; low levels of regulation and planning controls; a 100 per cent business rate discount over a five year period for businesses that move into a Growth Zone during the course of this Parliament (although I recommend a graded scheme to reintroduce business rates thereafter, alongside a graded penalty scheme for businesses that choose to move away once the discount is removed); all business rates growth within the zone for a period of at least 25 years will be retained and shared by the local authority to support its economic priorities; and Government and local authority help to develop radically simplified planning approaches.

I believe funding should be provided for an office that would help film makers (cinema or television) find locations within Powys. Llandrindod Wells would be the best location (as it is in the centre of the county). Powys has breathtaking natural beauty that has gone unused by film makers, simply because nobody knows about it. A film locations office would bring income to landowners whose land would be used, and to residents who could be hired as ‘extras’ during filming.

Material I have read on Enterprise Zones has categorised them in certain ways, stating what tax breaks, planning controls and broadband levels might be possible, along with a line called ‘Sector Focus’, declaring what businesses should be encouraged into the zone. I would recommend:

Tax break: Save businesses money in foregone business rates.

Planning: Simplified regime permitted the change of use of existing buildings.

Broadband: Explore delivery of superfast broadband with suppliers.

This leaves the ‘Sector Focus’. I would like to propose several possibilities as follows, based on my knowledge of local industry and the possibilities that could be accommodated here in Powys:

Sector focus: Green technologies; Advanced technologies; Movable skills (small businesses that could benefit from working in a rural setting); sustainable agriculture (farming techniques that are beneficial to the environment); creative industries; energy sector (carbon-free/green).