Superfast Broadband For Scotland - Have We Not Heard This All Before?

I have been reading about superfast broadband coming to Scotland:-

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opini...t-broadband-for-all-scots-is-coming-1-4668510

I am sure we have heard all of this before lol The Scottish government was apparently so slow rolling our broadband that the UK government is now dealing directly with local authorities. I have no idea of the true story here but all governments seem to repeat the same promises over and over again while making out they are new promises lol

Would superfast broadband make a big difference to your business?

 

...It depends what they mean by 'super fast'. And it'll depend on what you're doing.

Until quite recently we were on copper to the exchange and barely saw 0.5Mb/s - Upload was a bout 0.3Mb/s We got a good deal on Fibre To The Cabinet a year or so back which has taken us up to a reliable 35Mb/s 8/Mbs upstream. - 0.5 was hopeless!

Normal browsing - email etc - is little different. Where the speed comes in is in using streaming services. For us the fast upload has been a godsend. For a year or two now all material delivered for broadcast is file-based. Previously I had to drive to Fountainbridge to hand over a memory key; these days (for shorter stuff at least) I can do an FTP transfer from base.

 

Indeed, but it will be of benefit to many types of business.

Consider something like a local garage for example...

The MOT system is now 'online' - your car gets logged on to the system, the test progresses and everything is logged remotely. Service Data - a few grand a year buys you access to a system of online manuals; which are really needed at each workstation now. Some of the diagnostic software you car plugs into requires an internet connection - then there is the Chip & Pin, online banking etc... You can see quickly how important a fast connection could be to say - a wee independent with two ramps and an MOT lane.

Then there are other thing like VOIP services which piggy-back on internet services etc.

It's long overdue if you ask me - has to be a good thing.

 

That's what politicians do... Nothing useful; they just bump their gums. I seriously doubt if Tricky Nicky can solder, drive a digger or terminate an optical fibre. But you can be damn sure if there's an opportunity to have her photae taken in a hard-had waving a chrome shovel, she'll be right in there. ;-)

 

Well I was a lecturer for twelve years; five hours of stand-up three times a week... Plenty of practice. ;-)

I've had the misfortune to deal with quite a few of these 'starlets' in my time - I actually went to school with Frank McAveety for example - and, almost universally, they become 'wired to the moon' and utterly deluded. - Then they wonder why the general population are so turned off by politics!

In all seriousness, they just don't live in the real world.

 

Oddly enough Mark, where I come from, dodgy business people are often dismissed with a sigh and a comment to the effect they'd make a 'good politician'; which in itself is something of an oxymoron. ;-)

 

The problem in the UK is that you cannot be seen to be a politician and a successful businessman - for some reason the two dont mix with the electorate. However, surely those who have been at the cutting edge of business have the knowledge to make the right decisions for businesses in the UK? Love him or loathe him, the US economy and stock markets are flying high since Donald Trump came in. He must be a PR mans nightmare but he has been bankrupt at least once and come back so he may play the fool but he is far from it.

 

I don't see Trump as a particularly successful business man. Had he not been born to rank and privilege he wouldn't have got far. Had he not been an abusive bully, with the facility of having people effectively bound in indentured servitude, he'd have gone nowhere. And he's not - for example - an Alan Sugar who actually did come from nothing and built something of substance. And I raise that example not only because he's a 'TV rival' of Trump'; but because he also indulges in 'role play' albeit in a different way.

And I don't think Trump's playing the fool - personally I see him as an infantilised psychopath, which, actually, is something that's been becoming more and more common in 'business' - and by that I mean those that get their nose in the trough at some or other place.

The US economy and stock markets may well be flying high - but who's economy is that anyway? It's like visiting a housing scheme in Glasgow and measuring the success of the area by how busy the Bookies' shops are. It tells you nothing of the underlying wellbeing and progress being made (or not, as the case may be) by the majority or of society.

When you focus on those things you make make the mistake of letting the tail of statistics wag the dog of reality; which is a favourite politicians like to do and like to mislead the electorate with.

- Which, in turn, is why 'politicos', i.e. actual politicians and their equivalent in 'business' don't wash with of the electorate; for they are just the rags caught up in the spin cycle; and they don't like it. - Trump is finding favour at the moment because his rhetoric for now is all about restoring the means by which people made their living - means that were stripped away from them over the course of the past forty or so years. And that's not just an American problem.

And what is a "successful businessman" - or business person - anyway?

Is it the individual who has sucked the life out of society for their own extreme personal gain, leaving a trail of broken people and denuded society and infrastructure? Is it the person who has trapped and enslaved others into a non-progressive cycle of greed and consumption? Or is it the person who has built something from the ground up? The person who stands on their own two feed and puts food on their table and clothes on their kids' backs? Perhaps its the person who, in that endeavour is providing others with the opportunity and means to do likewise?

Maybe it's the guy who come round to wash the windows once a fortnight, and now has his grandson working with him, having brought up three kids of his own, bought his house and lived a reasonable life with no harm done to anyone?