nationalisation

One of the allegedly glaringly popular promises in the last Labour manifesto was the promise of free broadband. I wrote about it a couple of times and decided that though it was desirable, the failure to socialise it both within the movement and society as a whole allowed the promise to be undermined by questions of cost. I concluded the article above by asking “why not free water?”. One of the answers to that is that much government business, which it requires those most likely to not have the internet requires its use, on the one hand, recording business activity and on the other claiming benefits and maybe equally importantly writing to one’s MP or Council. The idea came from two sources, one of them the London CWU who issued a pamphlet, calling for broader public ownership of the telco and postal services on the grounds that private/market ownership was wasteful of wealth and resources, has delayed the adoption of superfast broadband, caused an investment famine and led to a pursuit of short term fashion & profit rather than investing in infrastructure for long term aggregate growth. The Executive Summary is reproduced below/overleaf. … …