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UK 4G Coverage Worse Than In Romania and Peru, Watchdog Finds (theguardian.com)
Britain's National Infrastructure Commission has said in a major new report that the country's mobile phone coverage is worse than that in Albania, Panama, Peru and Romania, as users are able to connect to the internet barely half the time. The report also found that the country's data volumes are four to five times less than the U.S. and Japan. The Guardian reports: The commission, chaired by Andrew Adonis, the crossbench peer and former Labour minister, said the government must now ensure that the next generation of 5G spectrum does not have the failures that dog 4G coverage. "Britain is 54th in the world for 4G coverage, and the typical user can only access 4G barely half the time," Adonis said. "Our 4G network is worse than Romania and Albania, Panama and Peru. Our roads and railways can feel like digital deserts and even our city centers are plagued by not spots where connectivity is impossible. That isn't just frustrating, it is increasingly holding British business back as more and more of our economy requires a connected workforce." In a list of recommendations, it argued there should be a new dedicated cabinet minister in charge of the UK's digital future, ensuring mobile connectivity is competitive with the rest of the world. On top of that, it called for ministers and Ofcom, the media regulator, to work together to ensure a set of standards known as a universal service obligation no later than 2025. The crucial priorities for coverage are key rail routes, major roads such as motorways and all towns and cities, Adonis said.
It's easy to take cheap shots at the UK over Brexit, however in reality the referendum result was about anti-EU sentiment and sovereignty rather than xenophobia. Sure, a small core of the Leave campaign and their supporters are pretty xenophobic, but that is not reflected amongst the population at large. That side of things was given far too much weight by the media and the Remain side, to the detriment of rational debate in the run up to the vote.
The fact is that the UK is one of the least racist countries in Europe; we are far more multicultural and inclusive than the majority of EU states, and that's unlikely to change post-Brexit in my opinion. Regaining some degree of control over our borders removes the feeling that immigration is something being imposed on us by the EU, which is actually what people resent, not the immigration itself.
Oh no... it's the future.
I'm also British, and while a lot of racists have taken the leave vote to be a license to come out of the closet, a lot of people who voted to leave are simply fed up with the status quo. Look at the map of voters: in places with strong economies, the vote was for remain, in places with large amounts of poverty the vote was to leave. The core issue is that a significant percentage of the population is fed up with constantly being shafted by those in power. The only tragedy is that they decided to rebel by voting to give more power to the people responsible for those policies.
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The freedom of movement within the EU also has some negative effects. Most people in the UK learn at least some either French or German at school, but often not to a standard required to work in either country, and even if they do then that's only one other country where they can work. Almost everyone in the EU learns enough English to work low-skill jobs in the UK. At the opposite end, most high-skill jobs in the EU only require English. This means that freedom of movement creates opportunities for the high-skill workers in the UK, but increases competition for the lower-skilled jobs. The better-off people have benefitted from the freedom of movement, but the worse-off have not (though the amount to which they've suffered from it has been exaggerated by certain parts of the media).
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