With further student protests that have happened today over the tuition fee rise and the bill passed through parliament, I still fail to see what all the fuss is about.

Lets examine what is actually being proposed. Instead of funding further education through general taxation and thus people who don't take up FE having to pay for those that do, the government is proposing that tuition fees be increased so they cover the cost of the education received.
.
While the above sees a trebling of the tuition fees cap to £9,000, this can only be charged if the FE institution demonstrates they are helping pupils from a less affluent background who can see 2 free years of education meaning that on a 3 year course, they would only pay £3,000 a year.

At the start of this week, I was thrown in at the deep end with wireless networks in the village of Great Asby in Cumbria. Great Asby were pioneers of rural broadband getting a wireless mesh box system up and running and fed from a satellite. When the school got a fibre optic connection, the network was then fed from the this and eventually, the village had their own fibre link fitted to the village hall who kindly allow equipment to be hosted there. The main reason for the continuation of the network is because ADSL is not available. This is due to TPON being used just to deliver a good quality voice line which is incompatible with ADSL.

The network in Great Asby was put on a professional futting some years ago forming their own Community Interest Company, Great Asby Broadband CIC (GAB). The CIC is chaired by Miles Mandelson (before anybody comments, yes, he is Peter's brother!) whom I met a few weeks ago when Rory Stewart MP held an event for broadband champions in Cumbria.

Today really is a day to remember - Ashby de la Launde in Lincolnshire becomes the first full fibre deployment within a village in the country.

The network in Ashby has been ready to roll for over a month now with us waiting on the internet feed into the village being connected. This was finally turned on earlier today and has seen connections go from this :-


to this :-

To begin driving demand for future proofed internet access in Cumbria, the NextGenUs team and our partners AFL Telecommunications presented to local parish councillors, broadband champions, land owners and other interested parties at Cliburn village hall this evening on what we can offer.

Villages involved include Shap, Crosby Ravensworth, Great Strickland, Morland, Cliburn and Bolton.

Today the spending review talked about since the election has now been delivered setting out how savings will be made in order to reduce the deficit left by the previous Government.

One interesting point is the spending proposed for broadband. £530m has been set aside from both the BBC and digital switch-over under-spend. This is to get the "final third" that the big players say is uneconomical to deploy faster services (or even just basic services) to without subsidy.

Cumbria, North Yorkshire, Herefordshire and the Highlands have been selected as trial areas each getting £10m. The aim is to have this topped up with EU funding which generally doubles the amount.

Word has it that Cumbria was not planned to be one of the trial areas but got in on the action thanks to the help of Rory Stewart MP, specifically the Rheged conference he organised.

For a while now, I have been following what Rory Stewart MP has been doing to get faster broadband in Cumbria since his election, especially in rural areas. The conference held last month at Rheged in Penrith was a big help in getting communities interested in faster services.

Personally, I have been looking at ways to improve access in several villages between Shap and Penrith (where some of my family live) for a while and recently contacted NextGenUs who have nearly finished deploying the first Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) village in the country - Ashby de la Launde in Lincolnshire.

After a few conversations with their managing director Guy Jarvis, I have now decided to work with them to drive demand in Cumbria for future proofed digital services.

It has today been announced that six million people in the UK have either underpaid or overpaid tax in the past two years. The total underpaid amount is £2bn while the total overpaid is £1.8bn leaving a £200m differance for HMRC.

The mistake was found when HMRC recently started using a new computer system and ran a report to find any mistakes. The problem applies only to people who are paid on the Pay as you Earn (PAYE) system (the majority of employed people in the UK) and has generally happened because of the employer using the wrong tax code or where somebody has multiple jobs.

Campaign for Better Transport has today released a report saying the M6 Toll Road project has failed which basically confirms a lot of previous suggestion over the years that the road has been in operation.

The M6 Toll Road was initially known as the Birmingham North Relief Road and discussion about it began in the early 80s. It was planned to be a standard (free) bypass road built with public funds. In 1989, the plan was changed and it was decided that a private company would build a toll road collecting all charges for a period of 50 years. After 50 years, the road would then revert to Government ownership.

The road was eventually completed and opened in 2003. It took a mere 2 years for the owners to say the traffic figures since opening had been disappointing with other motoring organisations reporting that congestion on the main M6 road was still getting worse.

I have just read what appears the epitome of overkill health and safety locally in Carlisle. Basically, there is a moat surrounding our castle. There is no water going through it and is just covered in grass. As such, it obviously requires cutting frequently in the summer. Health and safety chiefs have however decided that it is too dangerous to do.

Having previously read about a woman who fell into the moat at 2am one morning and being able to claim £15,000 from English Heritage, you can partly see why they have taken this decision as she didn't even work for them and was able to make a claim. On the other hand, though, this is the sort of health and safety rules that the new Government is supposed to be putting a stop to but I think they need to start with legislation to stop as many people taking legal action in cases such as this first though so organisations like English Heritage are not as fearful of action being taken against them.

The second piece of good news for the motorist has come not long after the first. A few weeks back we learned that Oxfordshire has become the first entire county to decide to remove all of their existing fixed speed cameras. Previously, we had cities like Swindon remove them but this is the first entire county to proceed with this move. Swindon reported no increase in accidents since they were switched off so it will be interesting to see if the same result happens from the Oxfordshire camera switch off too.

The previous Labour Government argued that they saved lives because of the fact that the road death statistics were coming down but you can't just assume that is solely because of speed cameras. Also, look at where they were actually placing these cameras. Some places, such as on motorways, are very unlikely to have accidents where people are killed meaning they have been placed there for revenue generation which I will discuss next.