Britain - The Official Thread

  • Thread starter Ross
  • 13,373 comments
  • 618,747 views

How will you vote in the 2024 UK General Election?

  • Conservative Party

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Labour Party

    Votes: 14 48.3%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Other (Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland)

    Votes: 1 3.4%

  • Other Independents

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other Parties

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Spoiled Ballot

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Will Not/Cannot Vote

    Votes: 8 27.6%
  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .
I'd like to see them try something like this in Hull. Kingston Communications have a complete stranglehold over the entire city and most of it's outlying areas, and no other provider wants to touch it - mainly because it's too expensive to get there, and not enough people in individual streets want another provider, allegedly.
 
DG_Silva
I'd like to see them try something like this in Hull. Kingston Communications have a complete stranglehold over the entire city and most of it's outlying areas, and no other provider wants to touch it - mainly because it's too expensive to get there, and not enough people in individual streets want another provider, allegedly.
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Exactly what I was thinking... although I'm not complaining about the speed of our live-thingy-optics here in HU17.
 
TenEightyOne
Exactly what I was thinking... although I'm not complaining about the speed of our live-thingy-optics here in HU17.
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Just the price, eh?

My slow(!) fibre-optic from Virgin here in Birmingham is running at 100mbps, and can be upgraded to 300mbps; I don't download enough to see the difference and there's only two of us who live here. Upload speed could do with improving though...
 
DG_Silva
Just the price, eh?
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I think we pay 46.99 for unlimited, that includes all the local phone calls and the ability to nominate "friends" mobile phones. Not had any complaints that I can think of. Things like Virgin, TalkTalk and so on are BT services and aren't available here in any case, but that's another story :)
 
Aside from all of the obvious moral objections to nationalised internet (and why internet? Why not food, or water, or electricity, or houses?) the questions anyone should be asking of the plan are:
* How are you going to achieve this?
* Who is paying for it?
* What are the consequences of the government running your internet?
 
Famine
Aside from all of the obvious moral objections to nationalised internet (and why internet? Why not food, or water, or electricity, or houses?) the questions anyone should be asking of the plan are:
* How are you going to achieve this?
* Who is paying for it?
* What are the consequences of the government running your internet?
Click to expand...
Don't you need to be out of the EU to nationalise things like that?
 
Liquid
Why does Hull have its own separate telecomms service from the rest of the network?
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I'm guessing here, but maybe when BT updated the lines (and installed state listening devices) Hull wasn't top on the list (due to its small size) and so the council paid for it it's self and so they own the lines?
Reading up on it it seems like the main reason there isn't much competition is that it's so small it's not worth the investment, which is perhaps WHY Hull CC run the internet side of things?

from Wikipeida
The main reason cited by rivals for not providing services in the Hull area was rather one of overall cost effectiveness, given the relatively small number of potential customers (190,000 homes), and the fact that many of these would be likely to remain with the incumbent supplier.
Click to expand...

Looks like it's a good earner for the City Council, so in theory, long as that money makes it back to the City in investments, it's a good model?

...better than Manchester CC who simply buy up land to turn into multi-story car-parks, for the cars the city doesn't have...
 
Prince Andrew will be answering questions by the BBC in a "no holds barred" interview (that has taken six months of negotiations....)

Also, is the poll at the top of the thread going to be updated?
 
Liquid
Why does Hull have its own separate telecomms service from the rest of the network?
Click to expand...

Telephone exchanges used to be independent. Most were absorbed by GPO and eventually became BT, the Kingston Corporation didn't.

White_payphone.jpg


Liquid
Incidentally on the train talk I mentioned, there's even a separate intercity train franchise just for Hull.
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Indeed, and the service (once great) is now horrible. There are no main routes past Hull so it's a rail, road and cultural terminus. It's on the European highway that goes to St. Petersburg but you have to get on a ship to continue the journey :)

Hull likes to stand alone and considers itself very separate from the UK in general. It started the Civil War by not letting Charlie get his guns from the arsenal and has a long tradition of placing statues of monarchs on public toilets.
 
Liquid
That's the why I'm after.
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I'll see what I can find out, there's an ex-colleague who's big into the history of telephones (it's a strange world after all) who may know. Basically in 1914 the City Council decided to buy the licence for their existing network from the government. With modern download speeds at around 900mbps the decision seems to have been a good one. As I said earlier I suspect that the Council were unwilling to give control of their network to a London-based organisation.

Liquid
I was going to say rail, road and cultural black hole but terminus works as well, I guess.
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Some of the left-overs of City of Culture are very good, but the fact that it's effectively two cities meant that only the West really got involved on an ongoing basis. Additionally, the lack of middle-class suburbs (the outskirts of Hull are actually in a different county) meant that the benefits for wider educational and community stakeholders were blunted somewhat.
 
Tired Tyres
Don't you need to be out of the EU to nationalise things like that?
Click to expand...
No, but EU law does mean that the government would have to pay compensation to shareholders, albeit the level of which is decided by Parliament. I guess if that compensation is not sufficient, it could be challenged in the European courts, though that would depend on whether the UK was still in the EU or not...

Liquid
Providing an internet service will still be in the private sector but the infrastructure carrying it will be part of the nationalised BT; it's nationalised access to the internet, not nationalised internet itself.
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A lot of people in India will be hoping that Labour don't nationalize BT's customer service too.
 
Famine
Aside from all of the obvious moral objections to nationalised internet (and why internet? Why not food, or water, or electricity, or houses?) the questions anyone should be asking of the plan are:
* How are you going to achieve this?
* Who is paying for it?
* What are the consequences of the government running your internet?
Click to expand...

1, Socialist Magic.
2, Those evil capitalist pig dogs who run the technology companies that aren't based in the UK
3, None at all, the Most Glorious People's Republic of Corbynia is the absolute epitome of a free-thinking Nirvana. There's absolutely no need to worry about a humongous great telecommunications overseer in Cheltenham.

Touring Mars
A lot of people in India will be hoping that Labour don't nationalize BT's customer service too.
Click to expand...

Definitely a step towards making it worse...
 
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Famine
Aside from all of the obvious moral objections to nationalised internet (and why internet? Why not food, or water, or electricity, or houses?) the questions anyone should be asking of the plan are:
* How are you going to achieve this?
* Who is paying for it?
* What are the consequences of the government running your internet?
Click to expand...

If anyone thinks that this would actually work well, check out how happy everyone is with the NBN down here in Australia. I'd describe it in the typical Australian vernacular, but it would just be half a page of asterisks.
 
I think this tweet put tonight's Prince Andrew Did Nothing Wrong special into the best context:



Or, as Dom Joly put it, this was a worse car crash than getting a lift home from Prince Phillip. Aside from the "I don't do public displays of affection" utterly refuted by the many, many photos of him doing so with various lovelies and the fact that he couldn't sweat because of the Falklands he's unable to remember where he was or might have been for whole tranches of his life but is clear that on 10th March 2001 he was in the Woking Pizza Express. Which seems to have horrified him more than any of the allegations.

At least Pizza Express (Woking) is getting some good exposure. Kind of.

PizzaExpress.jpg
 
Frankly, it's the very least he could do - and his problems regarding his association with Jeffrey Epstein are far from over.

His staged interview last week was utterly bizarre and even the Palace itself is questioning the veracity of some of his recent comments - and some of his comments in the interview have already been proven to be false.

There are reportedly thousands of pages of legal documents currently under seal that allegedly contain Andrew Windsor's name, including testimony from Epstein himself, that could well be really bad news for Prince Andrew. Even if he is not found guilty of any criminal activity, his reputation is in tatters. If, however, there are more serious allegations against him (i.e. if he was present or knew about incidences of sexual abuse and/or trafficking in one of Epstein's properties), then he will be finished... and the implications for the royal family could be immense.
 
Liquid
His Royal Dryness, Prince Noncedrew.
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One of today's papers has run with "The Banned Old Duke of York", nice.

In other news: Alex Salmond (former First Minister of Scotland) has appeared in court charged with 14 sexual offences against 10 women. The charges include attempted rape, intent to rape, sexual and indecent assaults. BBC.
 
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