The publication of Lord Carter’s long awaited Digital Britain review caused me a problem. I didn’t know quite what to make of it. More specifically I couldn’t think exactly how to describe it succinctly or sum it up.
Years in the making, much anticipated and discussed, Lord Carter of Barnes’ White Paper provoked howls of protest and made front page news for two reasons:

Its proposal to stick a £6 annual tax on our phone bills to help fund high speed broadband infrastructure.
Its proposal to make us all pay a further tax (ie by increasing the compulsory TV license fee) to help fund ITV regional news.

I had been impatient for the report to be published (it was irritatingly hard to find out from the DCMS’ website exactly when it was going to be available! “This afternoon” was all it said).
I’ve spent much of my career working in ITV and BBC regional news and current affairs and have had a ringside seat watching the decline of the former and the rise of the latter and I have fairly strong views about it – see one of previous blogs ITV v BBC Who’s Saving Whom? http://kershmedia.blogspot.com/2009/05/bbc-v-itv-whos-saving-whom.html
As Head of Production at Kent video production company Kersh Media and KWIKVID, I’m very interested in the incredible potential of broadband, and rich media content distributed online which it makes possible.

Inevitably I speculated what I would come up with if I were in Lord Carter’s shoes. What a wonderful opportunity to redraw the UK’s digital landscape; to cut a path through the tangled and confused mess we currently have and open up the road ahead!

So when the report was finally published, I sat down the read it.
“Presented By Command of Her Majesty, Foreword by the Rt Hon Lord Mandelson, Executive Summary, A Competitive Digital Communications Infrastructure, Creative Industries in the Digital World, Delivering Digital Britain”..
I read page after page and as I did so I felt a sense of disappointment creeping over me.
There were plenty of good words; such as the need for widespread broadband access and an acknowledgment of the significance of this for the development of creative businesses (like mine!) to replace the UK economy’s depressing dependence on the “financial sector”.

But the more I read, the more unsatisfied I became. Disappointment was the over-riding feeling.

The following day’s papers and media analysis brought the mainstream reaction: anger over the £6 phone tax proposals and annoyance at having to pay extra license fees to fund ITV regional news (we’re already paying for the BBC’s regional news – now we have to pay twice – even if we never watch the stuff!)

Many commentators noticed the fact that the Conservatives (who are very likely to be in power in a year’s time) declined to be bound by the report’s findings (which arguably makes the whole White Paper pointless)! While others commented acidly on the fact that having written the thing, Lord Carter promptly announced his resignation from the government.

So what do I make of Digital Britain? And how to sum it all up?
Last night I was tidying the garden shed and came across a small garden firework left over from bonfire night.

It’s the sort of firework that’s more trouble to light than it’s worth. It promises a big bang, but in reality delivers just a few seconds of disappointing, feeble, pyrotechnics.

On it were the words, “Light at arms length and retire immediately. Emits sparks”.
An apt description of Digital Britain methinks.