Tag Archives: broadband

Mark Valladares

15 November 2019 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Fri 15th November 2019 - 11:15 pm
  • Lib Dems: Another unaffordable item on Labour’s wish list
  • Swinson responds to Tommy Robinson backing Boris Johnson

Lib Dems: Another unaffordable item on Labour’s wish list

Responding to Labour’s plans to part-nationalise BT, Sam Gyimah, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said:

It might be a Christmas election, but this is getting silly. Another day, another unaffordable item on the wish list.

Wasting billions of taxpayer funds to nationalise BT, won’t solve the connectivity issues faced by so many of our rural communities. The Labour plan is less open-reach, more overreach.

Liberal Democrats recognise the need for every

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The Voice

‘Ofcom have bottled it over Openreach’ – Farron

By The Voice | Fri 26th February 2016 - 9:42 am

 

 

Tim Farron by Paul Walter

Tim Farron has commented over Ofcom’s decision over the future of Openreach:

Ofcom had a chance to make a massive change in the sector and have bottled it. I am now calling on the Government to be bold and bring forward plans to break up Openreach and BT, and inject real competition into internet provision. If they won’t, we will, and I will challenge them to back it. Are they on the the side of entrepreneurship or not?

Most of my constituents count themselves lucky if they can

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 22nd January 2014 - 10:25 am

 Liberal Democrat MP Michael Moore writes a regular column for newspapers in his Borders Constituency. Here is the latest edition. 

Free Childcare

My colleagues in the Scottish Parliament have been making the case for extending child care provision in Scotland for some time. So the fact that from August 2014 thousands of two-year-olds in Scotland will be entitled a free childcare place for 15 hours a week is excellent news for families across the Borders.

This means that we now catch up with the situation in England where the Liberal Democrats have helped to deliver a similar plan for two years now. The …

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Mary Reid

A novel solution for rural broadband

By Mary Reid | Tue 1st October 2013 - 3:39 pm

There was a delightful story in the Guardian yesterday about how a church bell tower was used by a village to set up their own broadband network.

It was 4am on Thursday when Paull Taylor turned on BBC News to be greeted with a BT spokesman making grand promises about superfastbroadband in rural areas. The telecoms man was insisting his firm had not “exploited” £1.2bn of public funds – an accusation made by the Public Accounts Committee this week – and promising that most country-dwelling Britons would receive 2MB broadband by 2015. Despite the early hour, the 20-year-old electrician was lucid enough to provide a pithy response:

“Bollocks.

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 28th November 2012 - 11:37 am

Every week Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore writes a column for newspapers in his Borders constituency. Here’s this week’s edition.

David Steel book launch

Last week I attended the launch of the latest biography of David Steel in Westminster, this one written by David Torrance.  At the event I was pleased to be able to thank David publicly for the support and inspiration he has been to me over the years.

The book, to which I contributed the foreword (but otherwise none of the writing or research!) is certainly a testament to all David has achieved in his political career and, as his successor as Borders MP, I owe him a significant debt of gratitude. This new biography reflects on what I believe to be one of the most important and diverse political careers of recent times and I would encourage everyone to get a copy and give it a read!

Grocery Code Adjudicator

In my constituency, farming is an extremely important industry and as local MP I have been campaigning for fair prices for our farmers in a market which, for too long, has been balanced in favour of big supermarkets.  This is why last week I welcomed further progress on the Government’s Grocery Code Adjudicator Bill which received its Second Reading in the House of Commons.

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