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As the Conservatives fire the next round in the vote for me and I’ll get you faster Broadband, it looks like it set to become an important Election issue, just as getting the Banks better regulated, determining what is spent on Defence and what we do with our dwindling energy resources are. It’s all about better national infrastructure planning and no government has really done that properly since WW II.

It’s very clear to me that ‘The Market’ (okay it can’t help that much with defence) cannot do this by itself, look at the mess we face with meeting our energy needs – no commercial company will build the national infrastructure needed for the next generation and successive governments have abdicated their responsibly of doing it for short term populist gains.

The same is true for Broad Band. We have known for a number of years that more of everyday life is moving ‘online’ and with a current government promoting more and more of this through its many ‘citizen’ portals – Direct.gov is but one example – giving full and speedy access to all these platforms ‘is’ the governments responsibility.

An earlier post showed a good example of the lack of joined up thinking by this government. If you create legislation for farming that requires daily data to be uploaded from farms, then you have to build the infrastructure to support that across the whole of the UK not just urban and city -scapes, unless of course you move all the farms into the cities to give them a good connection!

No individual commercial company is going to ‘wire’ the UK for free and why should they. More importantly, why do they need to when we already have a national infrastructure practically covering the whole of the UK and particularly rural areas – yes the BT network.

Over the years BT has I think done a good job of building a better network and delivering good broadband speed (no I don’t work for them), but without (as far as I know) any large government funding/assistance specifically aimed at Broadband infrastructure. As a commercial company, yes they have had to be forced to open up their network to competing providers, but that is not a bad thing as it has helped drive down the overall costs to the end user – I know it has done that in my case and yes we now have more choice. But of course if government doesn’t ‘encourage’ BT with direct funding, even they will not upgrade all the UK exchanges to deliver the so called minimum 2MB target talked about by Labour.

Perhaps the BT national network infrastructure needs to be hived off and run as a separate concern providing a fully government funded/assisted ‘standard’ platform for all UK Broadband ISP’s. Nationalised? PPP? Something in between? Not sure. What I do know is that something needs to be done (not just talked about) quickly or the UK will slip further down the various league tables and any advantage that we think we have, will be further eradicated.

Again, yes it is an important election issue, but so are the UK power resources, you can have the best super fast broadband in the world, but if you cannot power your router up, what’s the point.

Some Broadband speed info results from friends around the UK. Reading: BT-5.5 MB (Me), Richmond: Virgin-10.5MB, Montgomery: BT-4.3MB, Manchester: Talk Talk-2.3MB

I received my Time Europe newsletter today and one of the main stories that it covers is the the recent Belgium Beer crisis. The basis of the crisis is about job losses vs.. corporate debt.

Having visit Belgium many times and still having connections with it, I wondered why the BBC had not featured this story more prominently on its news website or on the BBC news broadcasts? I know I can’t watch everything but I thought I would have heard more about this than a fleeting news article (can’t remember the channel) some days ago.

It still amazes me how much European news seems to be left aside by the mainstream news media such as the BBC and Sky, except of course when the ‘bashing’ seems to start.

Here’s screen snaps of today’s BBC Europe News page.

Despite the BBC having a special page dedicated to Northern Ireland (NI), the lead article is about NI, yes NI is part of the UK and we are part of Europe, but is this just laziness to repeat a story for the sake of it.

When you look at the rest of the page, there are at least 8 other stories relating to the UK, why when there is a already a special UK page where most of the stories are already shown.

I checked other online sites, Sky, Euro News and ITV – what a waste that was, but again not any real focus on European news, especially the Belgium Beer crisis.

However, the UK daily newspapers do seem to have covered this story reasonably well. The Times with a story about Brewery Managers being held hostage!, The Telegraph went with Belgium Beers shortages. While the ‘Gruniad’ shows nothing at all in its search results. Even Channel Four news site had nothing.

It always surprises me that despite the fact that we live only 22 miles from one of the biggest land masses in the world, how uninterested the BBC and other news organisations seems in everyday stories about Europe. I am sure if a minor celebrity had fallen over at the recent USA awards show, it would have been front page news on the BBC and Sky!

Come on BBC – and other mainstream TV news , wake up and get your European reporting sorted out.

We had our car’s passenger side window popped during the night by some mindless idiot!! One of at least three cars that it happened to in our road last night!!!

What a mess to clear up, glass all over the inside of the car!! I suppose we now become another entry on the Crime Statistics for Berkshire. Just waiting for those friendly AutoGlass people to arrive to fit a replacement.

One interesting comment from the Police when I rang for the Crime Number for the Insurance company. They asked if anything was in the car that might be able to be used to get fingerprints off. I said that there was an aerosol can of windscreen ice defroster that had been moved by the ‘perp’, so they asked that it be lifted out carefully and placed in a ‘paper’ bag. They said that it had to be a paper bag and not a plastic bag as this can sometimes  contaminate the ‘evidence’ with chemicals etc.

So it seems that all that you see on the various TV cops shows and even CIS (in its many variations) don’t always keep to proper methods of collecting evidence. Anyway found an empty cereal box for the can.

Spoilt the day though.

Seems we are being deluged with many new and tremendously good documentary programmes from the BBC.

I spent the weekend catching up with a few that I have recorded on my PC while I sorted out various piles of paperwork in my office. Did not get a great deal of paperwork sorted – I was interrupted by another task – other post, but saw some great programmes.

Ones to watch:

• Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World

• A History of Christianity

• Lost Kingdoms of Africa

• Delia through the Decades

Seems I forgot to post my past four months Broadband speed graphs.

Don’t think I have anything to complain abut here, though its still not at the 8MB’s that BT always seemed to want to tell us that we could get.

In fact, I am now told by BT that I should now be able to get up to 20MB!!! That will be interesting to see. I have carried out one test that indicates that I could get 9MB, but I think I will have to replace my Net Gear ADSL router to achieve this.

Anyway it’s way better than Talk Talk seem unable to deliver as part of their so far failed multiple attempts to provide ‘free’ broadband as part of my domestic line rental move to them. What a bunch of hopeless idiots their support services are.

If anyone else is thinking of moving to Talk Talk – DONT!

Thank goodness I have kept my business line with BT!

I watched today’s PMQ’s and the PM’s statement afterwards and have two questions.

During PMQ’s the PM said that there had been a reduction in the number of people unemployed. No other information was given. Am I to understand that an equivalent number of new jobs have been created? If so where?

In his statement about new anti-terrorist security steps being put in place. Am I to understand that we are just now introducing a no-fly list?

It seems a bit late to me that our supposed rulers have only just thought of this! I wonder how much else they have forgotten to implement on our behalf.

Just took my wife to work, managed to get out of our local side road as many of the residents worked to clear snow away over the weekend. Car had not moved for over a week but started first time!

Went into Reading along the Shinfield Road and could see that there was a great deal of snow there as well, but some has obviously been cleared away.

But came back via Pepper Lane and could not believe how much snow was still on  the road as well as packed ice!! Does Reading Council not see this road as a major traffic route?

I had heard that buses from Lower Earley were not using Pepper Lane during the deep snow fall, that I can understand. But over the weekend how come that the council snow ploughs have not been out at night when there was no traffic on the roads to get it sorted.

I expect it has something to do with the current stupid interpretation of Health & Safety rules where the council won’t insure their workers at night and I expect the local council unions have something to do with this not wanting their members to suffer too much in the cold!!!!

I seems to me that this country is loosing it ability to look after itself and everyone is always looking for an easy way out of any situation. I am sure if I can clear my part of my local road, Reading Council should be able to clear all major commuter roads!

Surely this is one very good reason that we pay our local taxes for!

I think that the current government thinks we are! Yes it is great that we have a plan (announced today) to provide more greener energy as an alternative to fossil fuel based energy generation.

But hang on a bit! If we now have all this new energy, how do we get it to the users? Well, it seems as per the article referenced above, that the government in their wisdom have failed to understand that all the new energy generated by the wind farms needs a better infrastructure than currently exists to deliver this new found green energy to the final consumer.

Estimates for the new super grid run at around £10 billion with no firm plans as to how this will be financed. Very clever joined up thinking; not!

It’s a bit like, lets build two new aircraft carriers, yet we don’t have any planes as yet to put on them, why? Well we haven’t ordered them as yet!

Yes, the government may think that we don’t know, or are not interested in these minute details. But I have a thought, I think we are interested, very interested in making sure that the short-sightedness of politicians and their supposed vote grabbing is seen for what it really is; vote grabbing with a huge cost to the public purse.

We must make any future government fully accountable to us for any further public spending and they must realise that we want real value for money, not just lip service for a tick on the ballot paper.

More snow feel last night with more predicted to fall later today and at the weekend. Thank goodness for broadband and working from home. I was supposed to go into London today, glad I moved that appointment to next week!!

The view of my back garden does look nice though!

Over 3 inches in four hours tonight.