That Starmer fella...

it would do the million or so workers who work for those ISPs out of a job (i.e. it's not just shareholders!)

This can’t be right - 3% of all workers in UK are employed by ISPs?!

And even if that was the case surely you'd still need the majority of them, regardless of who is providing the service.

This can’t be right - 3% of all workers in UK are employed by ISPs?!

I'm sure I got that from somewhere, but can't remember for the life of me where. But I do know there are more ISPs in the UK than you'd think - there are over four thousand of the bastards. And obvs they're not all huge but even assuming every one has 250 employees that brings us up.

Nope, lot of duplication across those four thousand ISPs. Don't get me wrong, you'd need a lot more people, but once you remove the duplicates and have a single network you're looking at AT LEAST 3/4s of them being made redundant or having to be supported by the govt.

I could only find numbers for the US on my phone:
1410 ISPs
271k people employed

Not sure how comparable that is though as the landscape involved is different!

If 3/4 of jobs really are duplicated (and don’t need to scale with customers), surely that’s a great argument for combining? The cost to provide the service will plummet.

Edit: not sure how about this source but it’s way off your numbers - 735 companies, 25.6k employed https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/market-research-reports/internet-service-providers-industry/

The cost to provide the service will plummet.

And if the remaining companies put up prices, imagine the return to shareholders! 🥳

Ie the people of the UK? 🥳

If 3/4 of jobs really are duplicated (and don’t need to scale with customers), surely that’s a great argument for combining? The cost to provide the service will plummet.

Absolutely! But we tried it in the 80s with BT. We had single provider for the UK and they had no incentive to do better. It removes customer choice and therefore competition.

And it would behoove Labour to have been honest abotu the fact that it would bankrupt most UK ISPs. They weren't. That interview with John McDonnell where he casually mused about taking Virgin and Sky over was a car crash. They hadn't thought it through.

Those stats are way out. If you go to the OfCom website you can see how many resellers there are in the UK and it's over 4000. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/numbering/numbering-data

Also lads, the principle matters. If you're going to bankrupt or forcibly take over Sky, Virgin, Talk Talk, Vodafone, and BT Wholesale at under market rates, making an enormous number of people jobless, as well as taking their pension pots and all the people who rely on them, you probably don't want to call yourself the Labour party.

And at a time when people were using food banks at a higher rate than ever before, it just seemed like painting the living room while the house was on fire.

That's without the - frankly - terrifying idea that the government control your internet. If that doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, I don't know what does.

There's a reason industry was against it and it wasn't self-preservation.

https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/15/labour_pledges_free_broadband_via_partnationalisation_of_bt/

Do those all count as ISPs and are they all active? Broadband comparison sites quote ‘over 150 providers’ for domestic broadband (which is what we’re talking about here) and 85% of households are with 4 providers, not leaving a lot else to go round… I can’t see a company of 250 being sustainable on a few hundred subscribers. Although I suspect most are inactive or setup to service a single company/building/campus/etc.

Anyway, I agree with all your other points!

They DO count as ISPs (though they may not have their own networks, they all sell broadband/voice as a supplier to an end customer) but as for activeness, I couldn't honestly say - I don't think OfCom remove them. I work for a challenger ISP and we have 400 resellers under us, which range all the way from household names to hyper local organisations with literally a few hundred circuits. I'm sure for the larger orgs you'd see similar stats.

This can’t be right - 3% of all workers in UK are employed by ISPs?!

I see a LOT of Openreach vans. Just googled it and they employ 35,000 people. I know they're not actually an ISP but...

Its no different to having a progressive energy strategy rather than trying to bribe EDF to build a nuclear power station in my eyes.

You must have big eye sockets. Or SMR technology has really advanced.

You must have big eye sockets. Or SMR technology has really advanced.

Dad joke!

Well quite - a physical job that has to cover the entire UK is only 35k.

I think they hire a bundle of subcontractors too.

Edit: Yes, they hire contractors from Kelly Group, Kier, Telent and John Henry Group

The last time Openreach recruited 5,000 extra engineers, half of them were via those companies. As a rough calculation after totting up various figures, I think there are an extra 10k engineers working for Openreach via those companies.

Just watching Starmers Beergate victory speech.

Still think he's playing a blinder. However, now is the time to start making Labours positions much more clear. He just said that he's going to do that over the coming days.

Let's see what happens. I expect Labour to continue to pull away but there's plenty of opportunity to screw this up.

He’s such a stable character I’d expect labour in government soon hopefully.

None of those shitcunts in the conservatives are going to change much.

Question is will a new Tory leader go to the polls for a new mandate and also to get a crazy set of manifesto policies that the lord's won't block for being bat shit mental as they were in the manifesto?

Good flag energy too

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He's playing the game to get the job and I'm loving it

I thought it was a good speech. However, there were a few vox pops after Bojo's resignation where people said that they would never trust Starmer.

Admittedly, this is London centric, but I can't forget the constant ad hominem attacks against Corbyn in the Metro and Standard in 2019 (e.g. anti semitism and pro IRA) which were just thrown out with no context or background.

What's the betting that Starmer won't get the same treatment? How about his non-involvement in the Savile prosecution? I can't see that not being raised in the right wing media disinformation.

What's the betting that Starmer won't get the same treatment? How about his non-involvement in the Savile prosecution? I can't see that not being raised in the right wing media disinformation.

There's definitely a core of people who lapped up the starmer is a paedo protector bullshit. I'm just hoping that it really is a fringe group and most people won't fall for that shit. In reality, I fear you might be right. As you say, the IRA stuff stuck to Corbyn. That photo of somebody who is not him being a pall bearer at an IRA funeral is still regarded as concrete evidence by a lot of people.

The chap in the middle on the orthographic leftof the coffin is Sinn Fein's Jim Gibney but a whole lot of people swear blind it's Jeremy Corbyn. It's nuts what the media and social media can do.

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Who'd have thunk it that those propping Starmer up right now and those he's allowed back into the party were actively working against a Labour victory in 2017?

Well, literally anyone on the left, that's who. Now corroborated by an independent QC. No hiding place now, fellers. Guilty as charged. Hang your fucking heads in shame.