Please restrict your political ravings to a more appropriate forum. Your post does little more than make yourself look ridiculous and stupid since it has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

Political ravings/ranting may well belong on a different forum, however there was no need to add that the poster made himself look ridiculous and stupid as well .

In reply to a post by KelvinBridge:

Political ravings/ranting may well belong on a different forum, however there was no need to add that the poster made himself look ridiculous and stupid as well .

Thanks for your kind words of support, Kelvin. Calling their political opponents "ridiculous and stupid" is way below the belt, even for the Tories. Though when canvassing for the Communist Party we suffered far worse abuse, especially in South Suffolk. Did I mention that one bumpkin-farmer threatened to shoot us? The Tories ain't called the Nasty Party for nothing!

C'mon guys, lighten up a bit! It is after all the Sabbath. The day of rest. The day that God put His feet up, too; lit Himself a nice fat Havana; and poured Himself a well-deserved stiff drink (Jameson's no doubt); before admiring all the Public Infrastructure He had built over the six days previous. I'm sure He won't mind me saying that it's amazing what you can achieve when you put your mind to it!

If only BT would follow His example in their fibre rollout. Instead of the sinful balls-up we've had from them to date.

Applying Band-Aid after Band-Aid just to keep their wretched telco network from collapsing in an unedifying heap. First we had that g.vector blundering - will it work? Or won't it? Nope, it won't. Then g.inp that also won't play ball with BT's el-cheapo cabinet kit. Then that DLM/Assai code-pilfering scandal. Not to mention all the other ECI catastrophes. Retro-fitting those heatpads in the DSLAMs to keep the slugs off the PCBs. For chrissake! Heath-Robinson or what?? And all that dodgy new cabinet kit costing a fortune but obsolete already; fit only for landfill before it's even installed. Shameful. Then those flaky promises of g.fast being just over the horizon. Sorry guys! False alarm! Let's aim for the next horizon, yes?!

Britain must get this train-wreck of a telco network back on its feet again, and pronto. And let's aim for the sky this time. Fibre-to-EVERY-Premises is quite possible this side of 2020. All it needs is a bit of cash. About £30 billion should do nicely.

Though how to pay for these great Public Works programs? How to fund these major Internal Improvements as Abe Lincoln called them? Burning questions that have challenged economists time over.

In the case of the telecoms network, we must first renationalise the infrastructure unit, BT Openreach. Bring it back into public hands, so we can administer public help. It's a monopoly anyway, so it may as well be a public-monopoly. Minimally compensate BT shareholders; reimburse them no more than the flotation price (130p) they paid in 1984.

Then the incoming government needs to create a National Bank; one that will issue Public Credit for major infrastructure projects, just as China has been doing for the last four decades. Greatly expanding its public works programs of late, throughout the region, with its new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. An economic policy that the wider BRICS group of nations wisely intends to follow suit, too. With their own New Development Bank issuing their own credit for infrastructure work across the BRICS nations (Brazil-Russia-India-China-S.Africa).

Fibre To Every Premises (FTEP) is a very worthy candidate for a Public Works project for Britain. All funded by Public Credit. That Credit secured on the future access fees for the new FTTP network. Those access fees guaranteed from the increase in productivity and production through the technological progress of having a fibre-only network with gigabit access speeds.

The new credit-issuing National Bank would operate under vastly different rules to the Bank of England. All but side-lining the latter with its discredited policy of "Quantitative Easing". Utterly wasted money which could and should have been invested directly into the physical economy, providing credit for new public infrastructure works. But, instead, that new money was blithely pumped, with no strings attached, into the bankrupt "Too Big To Fail" private banks. Since the end of Glass-Steagall rules on banking separation, those banks were then allowed to fritter that new money -- OUR money -- just as they had previously been doing -- by speculating in the casino-like derivatives trade. Only temporarily propping up the already bankrupt financial system. Merely postponing the next looming financial crisis.

Funding new infrastructure works through Public Credit issued by a National Bank has its roots in the United States. In fact it's called the American System or American School of Political Economy. A policy eloquently described by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was the very first Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; one of the founding fathers of the USA and an economic genius.

Throughout its history, when the USA has implemented Hamiltonian National Bank and Public Credit policies, it soon has found itself in conflict with the oligarchic monetarists of Old Europe; adherents of rabid free-market racketeers and imperialists like Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Maynard Keynes and so on. Since the 1780s, it has been a ceaseless battle for those sincere economists working towards Hamiltonian Principles, formulating policy that does issue Public Credit for projects that benefit the Common Good, projects that do further the General Welfare of the People.

Here's the Draft Legislation to restore a National Bank of the USA; it's a Bill of Congress that could soon be tweaked for the British Parliament. Where there's a will there's a way!

Cutting through the banal soundbites of this 2015 election season, what do Brits really want for Britain? A raft of major infrastructure works including a fully fibre-based telecoms network? Future-proofed for decades to come? Delivered by 2020? And costing a paltry £30bn? Funded entirely through Public Credit issued through a Hamiltonian-style National Bank?

Or, alternatively, do they want another £6 trillion (that's £6,000 billion) of new funny money, injected every few years into the collapsed Anglo-American financial system, through that absurd policy of "quantitative easing", just to keep the bankrupt City of London and Wall Street alive for a little while longer on life-support??

It's a no-brainer, isn't it?!

--
.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-May-15 04:02:56)

Blimey (I'm the OP).

I do live in the South Suffolk Constituency but I'm probably what everyone would call "poor", or "poor-ish". I live in nearby Hadleigh, where nearly all of us have FTTC (one of two EO-rearrangement cabs went live very recently I think). I'm still with ADSL2+ because it's slightly cheaper and I get the full real-world rate.

I was just on a bit of a walk and thought "Blimey, proper FTTP with green pole-boxes and everything!". It may not be a select few paying for it at all, it may simply be the start of a larger rollout to Kersey itself, evidenced by the new but as-yet-unconnected poles.

I believe Kersey primary school has has some form on broadband for a couple of years now, as it has line of site with Hadleigh Industrial Estate, which is home to several mobile operators' masts.

I think I can provide you with a postcode which definitely has FTTP from one of the poles in question, but I can't be 100% accurate just by clicking on postcode-finder sites.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-May-15 00:56:08)

@Edwincluck
Do you actually remember how bad 'BT' was when it was in public hands as the GPO?
Do you remember how long it took to get a simple repair mended - and then two people turned up to re-connect a broken wire?
Do you remember the colossal over manning and total waste of money that it consumed?
Well I do - as do many others.

As for the banking system I don't think you would have enjoyed the result if the likes of RBS & HBOS had actually been left to go bust.
Th personal accounts would have been a minor 'problem' - the real issue would have been the corporate accounts - those of credit card companies, airlines, petrol stations, supermarkets. water companies, energy supplies.
So what with current accounts non functional, so suppliers not being paid, your credit cards not working, fuel supplies running out as deliveries could not be paid likewise food becoming scarce, airlines ceasing to operate, maintenance ceasing on energy infrastructure, etc the UK would have been reduced to a barter style economy within a week or so.

As far as I'm aware there is not an Officially designated 'Bumpkin Shooting'' season recommended on tbb, and anyway most peoples routers don't shoot very far !!

pps. and you are definately mistaken about Jamesons, Laphroaig Quarter Cask would be far more likely !

Kersey itself is not at present down to receive FTTP but is merely down for "Under consideration for fibre between 2015 and 2018" whatever that means. The FTTP poles must be for properties that are supplied by Boxford PCP 1 which does reach out a thin finger in that direction. Kersey itself gets it's phone supply from Hadleigh I believe.
I do live in the area supplied by Boxford PCP 1 (not near Kersey) so am, much to my surprise, down to eventually get FTTP. Jolly glad too as my ADSL is unreliable in the extreme as well as slow mostly due to lots of ancient PO days aluminium cabling which is crumbling away as it has oxidised over the decades.
The fibre is BDUK funded and after making enquiries was told that for the diverse area supplied by that cabinet FTTP was the cheapest option as the cabinet is too far from most of the supplied properties for FTTC to be effective.

Kersey does indeed gets its phone supply from Hadleigh - PCP 10 is on a little grass traffic island close to the church. I was sort of ignoring that though, to be honest, as I knew Kersey was never on the commercial FTTC rollout - and Hadleigh supplies Bildeston with FTTC, whilst Bildeston has its own telephone exchange. Bildeston is quite a way further away from Hadleigh than Kersey is, too, so that surprised me. I think they had an easy cabling route, though, along The A1141>B1115. I watched half on roadworks.org and half in real life as they struggled to pull it along there.

@zom22

Heh! I can just remember BT in public hands. A long time ago. The sell off was 31 years, 3 weeks and a day ago. But who's counting?!

You can remember such terrible service under the GPO? Are you sure? It's just that time and the professional mind-benders can play funny tricks with our memories. Sometimes we're told we remember things, when in truth we don't. All I can remember from the 1980s are the ever-happy GPO linesmen of the day, walking with a skip in their step; holding hands in solidarity; all with beaming grins on their cherub faces! How times change!

To be serious, the BT privatisation was engineered by the secretive Mont Pelerin Society (MPS). The MPS micro-managed government policy of the day. First objective of the MPS was to demonise the state-owned industry and its assets. Lots of poisonous rhetoric was planted in the corporate press to loosen up the public mind; readying the people for the state sell-off of the GPO. Same with the NHS today, or the Royal Mail last year. Convince us that it's beyond help, and that handing over the 'family silver' to oligarchic private-ownership is the only cure.

Though you're right about the banks. They play a critical role in the economy. They can't fail. However they must be put through bankruptcy reorganisation. The British (and American) banks went bust decades ago. That bankruptcy reorganisation must safeguard the banks' crucial commercial functions: their retail deposit-taking, their loans to small-medium businesses, pension-management, household mortgages and so on. Whereas throwing to the dogs the banks' exposure to the derivatives market, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), "carbon swaps", and other "exotic" forms of worthless speculative paper.

That separation of commercial banking and speculative casino-finance is key to getting Britain back on the road to true economic recovery.

As proof there's nothing new under the sun, an identical banking reorganisation - one that separated commercial banking from "investment" finance - was performed at the height of the Great Depression, way back in the 1930s. An economic depression that once again was caused by casino-like speculation by the banks. In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's government enacted a law known as the Glass-Steagall Act; named after the two congressmen who sponsored it.

Coupled with a huge Public Works program of the day - known as FDR's New Deal - the Glass-Steagall Act all but halted the economic depression of the 1920s and '30s. Instead, ushering in an extraordinary new era of economic optimism. Which subsequently turned the United States into the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world; far surpassing what remained of the British Empire. To be blunt, we would be living under Nazi rule today if the USA hadn't, thanks to FDR, been in that critical financial position to assist Britain during WWII. Churchill saved our limey asses? Forget it! Roosevelt was our true hero!

In 1999 the Glass-Steagall Act was tragically repealed with catastrophic consequences. By 2007-8 we were witnessing an unprecedented Global Financial Collapse (GFC).

In 2013, Britain was very close to enacting a Glass-Steagall Act of its own; with Parliamentarians proposing FDR-style banking separation - that same separation to safeguard the critical commercial functions of the banks from the seedy underworld of speculative finance. That banking separation proposed as an amendment to the 2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill. The City of London has never experienced banking regulation along the lines proposed. It would have been a turning point in the exercise of parliamentary sovereignty over the Square Mile. Sadly the proposals lost by just 9 votes in the House of Lords. Ultimately defeated by the Nasty Party that receives over 50% of its funding from the supremely corrupt banking industry.

Enough talk of banksters. This is Bank Holiday Monday; a rare day of rest from the slime-mould of the City! Though for those with a stomach for banking reform, some Ozzy friends have put together a pamphlet on the importance of a Glass-Steagall separation of the banks:

The London and Wall Street-centred world financial bubble is today far larger than in 2008. To avoid a financial collapse and a likely new world war, we must cancel the bubble: split the "too big to fail" megabanks into speculative investment banks (with no government protection), vs. normal banks which invest in the real economy. The CEC�s new pamphlet, Glass Steagall Now!, tells you exactly how to do it.

If Brits want Fibre to Every Home; not just Fibre to select suburbs of West London, then serious reform of the banking sector is needed first. In telecoms, as with so many other sectors of the economy, the Brits deserve far better than we get today.

Edited by deleted (Tue 05-May-15 01:55:29)

Can edwincluck's posts be segregated into a different thread please? I wanted this to be about real-world implementation of fibre (of whatever kind) in 2015.

I'm not saying he should be censored; I'm not a fan of censorship at all. But I think it's a bit off-topic. I'm also not saying that just because I started the thread, I get to say what's said in it - that would also be ridiculous. But my small comment about some people in the area I photographed possibly having enough money to fund FTTP themselves (with absolutely no evidence, and the caveat in the first place that I was making massive assumptions) seems to have triggered several rants which might spoil an extremely simply Q&A thread about what the various types of FTTP/FTTrn do and don't look like.

Edited by deleted (Tue 05-May-15 01:39:48)