Slashdot Mirror
UK Researches Future 10Gbps Broadband Technology
MJackson writes "The UK Technology Strategy Board, an executive non-departmental public body established by the UK Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has invested £1M into over a dozen research projects for the development of ULTRA Fast up to 10Gbps broadband technologies. The ultimate aim, the development of pan-European Ultra Fast Broadband, could give EU companies a massive competitive advantage on a global scale."
Its Orwellian, isn't it?
We have a Department of Culture, Media and Sport. What the hell is that? Now we turn out to have a Technology Strategy Board (TSB), whatever that is.
Not only that, we seem to have these things called "executive non-departmental public bod[ies] (NDPB)", which this Board is an example of. What the hell are they? And also we now have a Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). When did that spring into being, and what the hell does it do on Tuesdays?
We also have numerous 'Partnerships", which are not elected, but have some role in local government, with boundaries that do not coincide with any other local government agencies or elected bodies. We have County Councils. Then we have District Councils under them. Then we have Town, City or Borough or Parish councils. We spend a fortune on coordinating all their activities, or more usually on failing to coordinate them. They all raise taxes of course. We have Regional Development Agencies, which then give some of the taxes back in response to applications for grants which usually run to 40-50 pages submitted in ten copies.
What we have here is the view that the state should have a role in everything that anyone does. And so we construct these government agencies, or government funded agencies, which have a nominal remit to make everyone follow a party line. And we also have the view that if you cannot change what a department does, fine, change its name. Then no-one will have a clue what it is supposed to be doing.
For example, do you have any idea at all what exactly "English Heritage" is? What "Natural England" is?
No, thought not. Neither does anyone else. But you are paying for them. This is called 'investing in our great public services'. Orwell would be proud of his foresight.
Meanwhile, what we are not spending our money on. If you think your child will have Downs syndrome, you may decide to have amniocentesis. This has an associated death rate. So, in the national health service, which we have no choice about being in, they give a test for Downs with a high false positive rate, rather than multiple tests with low false positive rates. This results in excessive numbers of amniocentesis tests, which in turn results in miscarriages. Because 'investing in our great public services' rises to all these departments and executive non-departmental public bodies, it will not rise to doing reliable tests for Downs. And so we have lots of miserable ladies all going through totally unecessary miscarriages in order to fund these quasi or real governmental bodies, and their pensions, to fall all over each other and get in each others, and our, way.
Its a sick country.