Politician says something vaguely sensible

[doodab]

Tory MP: make unemployed build Britain's fibre network | Broadband | News | PC Pro

A splendid idea. Encourage them with the promise of unlimited "X factor" in HD and pay them the minimum wage. Once they are done with that we can get them performing other unskilled tasks. Like sitting on their fat arses talking bollocks at our expense.

[amcdonald]

[url=http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/367441/tory-mp-make-unemployed-build-britains-fibre-network?DCMP=NLC-Newsletters]Like sitting on their fat arses talking bollocks at our expense.

You want to use the unemployed as Service Delivery 'managers' ?

[doodab]

You want to use the unemployed as Service Delivery 'managers' ?

MPs. But basically the same thing, yes.

[hyperD]

They'd be better off digging up the 1,000 tons of concrete windmill bases that render the land barren.

[gingerjedi]

So he wants to employ unemployed people, genius!

[MrMark]

The reality is that, if you advertise paying work, you are inundated with applicants. Must admit to finding it amusing, on a board where posters boast they wouldn't get out of bed for less than £400 a day, to get calls to force others to work for nothing.

As for the claim that the Telecomms industry can't afford to lay those lines - well BT seem to refute it, in the very same article

BT said Britain had "one of the best broadband availability figures in the world" and said Davis had got his facts wrong. "The article is wrong in saying that the Government is to direct £530 million to BT to enable it to lay cable to 60% of the population," BT said in a statement.

"BT is investing £2.5 billion of its own money to bring super-fast broadband to two-thirds of UK homes and businesses by 2015. The public funding, which will only be available through a competitive tender process, will specifically address only the final third of the UK."

BT also took exception to Davis's jibe about BT's unwillingness to invest in nationwide fibre. "As for suggestions in the piece that broadband rollout is being handled by ponderous or monopolistic entities – BT is now passing 80,000 homes with fibre every week, and this is among the fastest fibre rollouts anywhere in the world."

[doodab]

My rather subtle and easily missed point was that laying fibre throughout the land is a complex job requiring all sorts of skills e.g. surveyors, lawyers, project managers as well as people to drive the diggers, splice fibre, configure optical networking equipment and so on. The idea that you can give a couple of untrained people shovels and tell them to get on with it betrays ignorance of what is actually involved.

Hence my suggestion that once they are finished they could go and sit in the commons for a bit.

[MrMark]

My rather subtle and easily missed point was that laying fibre throughout the land is a complex job requiring all sorts of skills e.g. surveyors, lawyers, project managers as well as people to drive the diggers, splice fibre, configure optical networking equipment and so on. The idea that you can give a couple of untrained people shovels and tell them to get on with it betrays ignorance of what is actually involved.

Hence my suggestion that once they are finished they could go and sit in the commons for a bit.

Hasn't Sasguru told you we're all cretins? Subtle points pass us by, like teeurds floating down the river.