UK landline tax scheme abandoned

THE UK GOVERNMENT rushed through last minute legislation to drop the superfast broadband tax yesterday.

The much lambasted 50 pence landline tax to fund the deployment of broadband throughout Britain was dropped prior to the general election. The move was part of a series of legislative slams, including proposals for draconian anti-filesharing enforcement, before the May 6 election.

While all parties agree that broadband rollout is a good idea, the issue of how to fund it has caused disagreements in Parliament. Treasury financial secretary Stephen Timms accused the Tories of bottlenecking the rollout of high speed broadband outside major cities and towns. He also damned the Tory plan to use BBC licence fee wonga because the government can't use it for three years.

The Tories would be responsible for "a disastrous betrayal of rural business, of young people and schools in rural areas and people living in rural areas who want to work from home," according to Timms.

While politicians scrabble to get their tuppence worth from the tax row, the idiotic clauses in the Digital Economy Bill went unchallenged. The Bill's clauses that force ISPs to act, in effect, as police community support officers rather than as service providers, have been signed off by the Tories. They're called Internet Service Providers, you dolts. The clue is in the name. µ