When I Hear the Word Burnham, I Reach for My Revolver

Given the Glorious Successor's ways of dealing with global warming (use more coal), pollution (build more airports), the energy crisis (go nuclear) and the end of the cold war (replace Trident), one might easily expect the Government's shiny new Prolegomenon to a Digital Britain Report to recommend a wholesale return to dial-up internet connections if not manually operated telephone exchanges. Surprisingly, however, besides promising "no new action, but instead eight new reports" (according to Daveybloke's uncharitable spokesbeing for Cultchah), New New Labour does pledge to offer up to 2mbps broadband access to everyone in the country whom the recession has not made homeless by 2012. Daveybloke's Cuddly Cultchah Secretary spattered the parade a bit with the claim that the country's average access speed is already 3.6mbps, and said that the Daveybloke administration would take two more years to supply broadband to half the number of people. The other half, being presumably in prison or the workhouse by then, need hardly concern us at this stage.

Unfortunately for New New Labour, their own Cultchah spokesbeing happens to be the gorgeous Randy Burnham, who believes that internet sites should be age-certified like films and that public libraries should have swimming pools, GP surgeries and a Starbucks or two in the vicinity as aids to cultural renewal. Randy's riposte to his coalition partner's liberal micturitory labour was to regurgitate the usual blather about historic decisions, rewriting rules, challenges, enhancement and so forth; and then, once all that was out of the way, to state that "these are matters of public private partnership. It is not a question of government funding it all". As in less significant matters such as public health and pensions, it is for governments to promise and companies to profit, while the public pays the bill when it all goes wrong.