back to article Grant Shapps of coup shame fame stands by 'broadbad' research

Grant Shapps seems far from crestfallen after his disastrous attempt to lead a coup against UK Prime Minister Theresa May. He bounces into his office 50 minutes late, having been waylaid by two Parliamentary votes, to discuss broadband research under his remit as chairman of the British Infrastructure Group (BIG), a body he …

  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    He is a professional "Internet Marketeer"

    He is a professional "Internet Marketeer". As the running gag says - "Tell mom I sell drugs, do not tell her I am into double glazing (or Internet Marketing)". No need to say anything more (or listen to anything he says for that matter).

    1. TitterYeNot

      Re: He is a professional "Internet Marketeer"

      I think that's a little unfair. He was after all the Minister for Housing for some time, and it's thanks to the raft of policies he introduced that we now have such a healthy housing and rental market in the UK...

      <Coughs apoplectically>

      1. horse of a different color

        Re: He is a professional "Internet Marketeer"

        Theresa May, is that you?

        1. Commswonk

          Re: He is a professional "Internet Marketeer"

          To paraphrase Voltaire...

          If Grant Shapps did not exist it would not be necessary to invent him.

  2. TRT Silver badge

    He cites his own constituency experience in Essendon...

    "Yet I went there and it transpired that ..."

    He went to his own constituency? To do broadband research nonetheless. Wow. An MP that visits their own constituency and talks to the constituents? Maybe he's not like the others after all.

    1. Jedit Silver badge

      Re: He cites his own constituency experience in Essendon...

      He's an idiot who half-arsed his way through a rushed meeting, burbling buzzwords and platitudes rather than anything of substance. Take a look at the negotations with the EU and tell me Shapps wouldn't fit right in.

    2. Elmer Phud

      Re: He cites his own constituency experience in Essendon...

      He is well known locally for his appearances at charity do's, as if he has saved the world - again, yet has been 'working remote' all the rest of the time except for brief gurning in front of press cameras.

  3. David Roberts

    Intersting snippet

    About all premises in a postcode being assumed to be on fast Internet once a cabinet can service 50%.

    1. jason 7

      Re: Intersting snippet

      Yeah when my parent's village was notified they were getting FTTC I told dad to keep checking the availability site nearly every day as I told him the new cabinet may be FTTC capable but only for the first 100 that sign up and the other 600 will be left out.

      I visit a lot of customers with crappy internet and I check they are in a FTTC area but they just left it too late or didn't know and are stuck on 2Mbps till another cabinet is installed.

      Pulling out the old bell wire only does so much.

      Oh and the parents got the Infinity okay a few months ago and yes they do use the bandwidth, big Netflix/Prime watchers.

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Intersting snippet

        but only for the first 100 that sign up and the other 600 will be left out.

        Depending on cabinet type and size a cabinet can service 128, 288 or 384 lines. BT usually only install the minimum number of line cards but will add more until the cabinet is full. After that they will build another cabinet. They seem quite keen to do that and it's probably because it's more cost effective than building a totally new cabinet. Most of the expense is incurred for the first cabinet. Adding more cabinets is pretty cheap and easy.

    2. AndrueC Silver badge

      Re: Intersting snippet

      Well for most cabinets it's going to be true for the majority of lines. Most cabinets serve urban areas and the majority of lines served by them are less than 1km in length (I believe the typical length is about 500 metres). So most lines connected to a cabinet will get in excess of 10Mb/s if that cabinet is FTTC enabled.

      But of course 'majority' and 'most' are not the same as 'all'. It's also made more difficult because BT don't have a complete map of their local loop. Prior to xDSL no-one cared how long a line was so nobody bothered to measure it or record it. For the same reason they don't know the electrical characteristics either. And after all that they don't know how xDSL signals on that line are going to be impacted or will impact other lines in the area.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Intersting snippet

        so nobody bothered to measure it or record it. For the same reason they don't know the electrical characteristics either.

        Sorry, but they do, it's routinely measured on every phone line as part of standard pre-emptive maintenance.

        1. AndrueC Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Intersting snippet

          Sorry, but they do

          That doesn't sound very likely. I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults. They are far more likely to take the philosophical view 'If a line fault occurs and no-one reports it, did it really happen?'. It's an interesting suggestion so I'll go and ask a few people I know. If you're right we'll all have learnt something and that's a good thing :)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

            Depends on what faults you are referring to. I'm prepared to believe that while caring nothing for pre-empting faults on an individual subscriber level, they might be well organized at maintaining the more central parts of their infrastructure (eg that which, if faulty, would affect hundreds or thousands of connections).

            1. AndrueC Silver badge
              Meh

              Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

              Well we're talking about the local loop here. I'm sure they monitor the core and one reply I've had on another side says that they monitor E-side but I don't see what they would gain from monitoring the D-side (and that's all you have with FTTC). It's just a lot of hassle and expense and it's not like they have a stringent SLA to keep on top of. Openreach is only aiming to fix faults within three working days. We know they have an almost permanent backlog of work so why add to that by trying to fix faults before they actually occur?

              Sadly that level of care doesn't sound like the openreach I've ever heard about.

              Hopefully the poster can provide us with more information.

              1. JamesPond
                Unhappy

                Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

                Profit is the motive so they will monitor systems and links to the SLA only.

                When I worked on NHS IT systems for BT, our monitoring and alerting and number of failover systems was based upon the SLA, especially % availability. If the cost of building systems to maintain % availability was out of proportion to the penalties for failing to meet the SLA, then the failover systems were not built, no matter what we told the NHS. It was base cost/benefit analysis.

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

                I'm sure they monitor the core <

                Very much so.

                why add to that by trying to fix faults before they actually occur?

                Because it's much cheaper to fix half a dozen faults, or pending faults, in one go than to schedule a maintenance call for each fault when it happens. Keeps the customers happier too.

                I don't have a reference to hand, but the process is called "routining" and I used to work in the same office as the guy who designed the system so I know it exists. No doubt the name will come back to me as soon as I press "submit" on this comment... :) Every night the routining equipment in an exchange will run round some percentage of the lines, skipping those in use, and measure the basic characterstics like impedance, loss, resistance to earth, etc. Any that are starting to fall out of spec are put on a worksheet so that the next tech to be sent to that exchange or cabinet would check & repair (or swap) the failing ones. That way the faults were picked up before a customer complained, and before there was an urgent need to dispatch a tech at short notice and at considerable additional cost. Over a few weeks every line gets tested at least once.

                A large network like the local loop wouldn't be half as reliable as it is if faults weren't fixed until they got so bad that someone complained.

              3. AndrueC Silver badge
                Thumb Up

                Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

                From the replies I've had elsewhere it seems like for once I'm the one unfairly maligning openreach. They do still run nightly tests and their database does attempt to record line length information so they have a pretty good idea of the state of their local loop. That being the case it strengthens my view that the Ofcom figures are more believable than the Shapps' figures. Ofcom will at least get answers from BT and probably won't be lied to (well..not much) whereas it's unclear if Shapps would ever get anything beyond PR material.

                So thanks those of you for correcting me. I did indeed learn something interesting.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

              I don't think openreach cares enough to want to pre-empt faults.

              The entire economics of Openreach is on the basis "cost +" on a fixed margin.

              If you fix pre-emptively and upgrade pre-emptively, your costs are lower, so your revenue is lower and your profit is lower. Similarly, any staff reduction is cost reduction which means revenue and profit reduction. Openreach will fight to the death any idea of doing anything not on-demand because it means less money.

              Raising such ideas while Openreach was in BT or god forbid crunching spreadsheets to compare current and possible after pre-emptive was a reason for your project being raided by some goons with Annex 1 clearance, the project disbanded and all people who have seen the spreadsheets being sentenced to do time either in BT Fleet or in her Majesty Correctional Facility Marthelsham Heath, AKA BT Research @ Adastral park.

              Anonymous - you can guess why.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Coup shame fame?

    The only shame is that the dimwits of the Tory party didn't support the attempt to oust her, presumably because they can't see how useless and unelectable Theresa May is.

    And the staggering thing is that having thrown away her parliamentary majority a few months back because of suicidal policies that pissed off people who would otherwise have been core votes, her idiot chancellor is currently trailing a budget to piss off even more of the Conservative voting base. Some people never learn.

    1. Naselus

      Re: Coup shame fame?

      "piss off even more of the Conservative voting base."

      In fairness, that's pretty inevitable anyway. The Tory party was actually more evenly split on Brexit than Labour were (not that you'd know it from the post-referendum news coverage last year, which bought into the fantasy that May had re-united a party that tore itself in half in the space of two weeks), so whatever the government does in relation to Brexit (which would be essentially everything they do presently) is certain to annoy the hell out of half their voters.

      Anyway, I don't think anyone is under the illusion that May isn't useless or unelectable; the problem is that everyone other alternative is worse. Johnson is so closely associated with Brexit he can't enter any of the major cities anymore. Leadsom has been thankfully forgotten; Liam Fox will stand again and lose again; Amber Rudd is just May 2.0 but with a majority of under 500; David Davis is on the libertarian wing and wildly outside the Tory mainstream. Gove's a joke; Osborne's gone, Ken Clarke is too old and too Europe-friendly. What's left? Nicky Morgan? Please.

      The current Tory bench is so devoid of talent that it took an equally talentless New Labour rump to make it look electable, and even there their past 3 results have been dire - two hung parliaments and one majority of about 20. They never really recovered from the Major years, they just managed to pretend they had under Cameron.

      1. Primus Secundus Tertius

        Re: Coup shame fame?

        @Naselus

        1. Thank you for a useful run-down, so to speak, of the Tories.

        2. "Nicky Morgan. Please"? I think/hope you mean "Nicky Morgan. Gulp!"

        3. Johnson is the one with brain power. But look at British history: it took the pressure of a war that we had been losing to get Lloyd George and Winston Churchill as prime minister, because many people opposed them. If Johnson is a successful foreign minister the situation that would get him into no. 10 will not arise.

        Politics is the art of the possible, except when it is impossible, which takes a little longer.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: Coup shame fame?

          Johnson is the one with brain power.

          At least that's what he like to think. A lot of other people think he's just another Eton fool.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Coup shame fame?

          >Johnson is the one with brain power

          Johnson is an over-educated idiot with too much confidence in his own limited abilities who demonstrates that money can still overcome lack of natural talent. Although compared to the rest of them he probably does seem educated.

        3. Naselus

          Re: Coup shame fame?

          "Johnson is the one with brain power."

          No, he really isn't.

          Johnson is a stupid person's idea of a smart person, rather than an actual smart person. Kind like Paul Ryan in the US plays a policy wonk on TV, but isn't actually very wonkish and isn't very good at policy, or Mitch McConnell pretends to be a grand master of the Senate but can't even get his own party to agree on legislation, let alone the other side. Or how Donald Trump played a successful businessman on the Apprentice, but at a time had completely failed as a businessman.

          Johnson uses lots of long words and throws in chunks of Latin to give the appearance of intellect, but if you actually drill down into his bloviating crap there's not really a lot of serious substance there. Just some appeals to naked bigotry, some patriotic-sounding half-truths, and a lot of waffle and outright lies. He got away with this for a long while, but his maneuvering over the Brexit vote - and the almost-instant subsequent exposure of everything he'd been saying as falsehoods (in spite of there being some very strong truthful arguments against the EU) - has sheared away his popularity, and left him an anathema to most Remain voters, which includes just under half the Tory membership.

          If using long words made you intelligent, Russell Brand would be a genius - which many younger voters assumed he was in 2015, until he revealed himself to be a man of very little brain indeed when a 20 minute chat with Ed Milliband revealed just how little he understood about the system he was attempting to critique. Johnson is much the same, and should be taken about as seriously.

          1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

            Re: Coup shame fame?

            One evening I tuned into Russell Brand's show on Radio 2 - mostly an easy listening music station - and he was chatting to guests about Plato and the school of Socrates. However, politics is difficult, and telling people not to vote, as a protest, really doesn't help. Come to think, Socrates got poisoned by government decree, so, bit of a blind spot there as well.

            I was told that Boris Johnson isn't as stupid as he seems but I wasn't given supporting evidence, and obviously there's an awful lot of room between "as stupid as he seems" and even "traffic warden". There is however a kind of moral stupidity about where and how to ride a bicycle, which women to sleep with, and how to coordinate a party line with the prime minister, that he seems to have a lot of. I think he intentionally shams being intellectually deficient to disguise his full awareness of being a horrible manipulative bully, and enjoying it.

            1. Naselus

              Re: Coup shame fame?

              "he was chatting to guests about Plato and the school of Socrates."

              The thing is, once again, if you remove all the flowery language from Brand, you quickly realise that he has only a very limited grasp of what he's talking about, and doesn't appear to understand how to read critically. I don't think he's thick, necessarily; I just think he doesn't have the critical thinking skills necessary for serious social analysis. As a result, he reads one book on a subject, believes it unquestioningly, and then starts spouting off about it to everyone who'll listen like a 15 year old who's just read the Communist Manifesto.

              So rather than producing an actual critical analysis of modern voting systems, Brand uncritically read someone else's critique (judging by the contents of the frankly dull 'Revolution', probably Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent), failed to understand any of the technical details which made the original actually make sense, and then mindlessly parroted his very simplistic understanding until Ed Milliband sat down with him for ten minutes and pointed out the numerous flaws in it, where upon he instantly recanted and told everyone to vote Labour instead. Rather than, say, having anticipated even the simplest of objections to 'his' ideas and having thought of a single counterargument.

              This is not a Great Thinker, but his use of ludicrously ornate speech patterns hides the fact he's often just recycling someone else's opinion on a topic. As such, he's not a smart person (since a smart person would be capable of coming up with and then defending an opinion on a topic, rather than just borrowing someone else's and then instantly abandoning it in the face of questioning), but he's a stupid person's idea of a smart person, since he uses long words to describe things he pretty clearly doesn't really understand himself.

              And this is where we get back to Johnson; he too simply uses very elaborate verbage to hide the fact that what he's saying isn't actually very highbrow. He dresses up his fairly basic arguments in the kind of language that people who barely completed high school imagine academics use, but which have none of the subtle differences in meaning or specific definitions that real academic language contains (though there's plenty of academics who fall into this particular trap, too, mind). And so there's no big clever original ideas hidden in there - it's just fairly ordinary Thatcherite Tory dogma presented in a particularly waffling manner, just as Brand's tedious diatribes are a 14 year old's understanding of libertarian socialism dressed up in the language of a particularly irritating 17th century poet.

              There's an old saying: "A good academic makes the complicated seem simple, a bad academic makes the simple seem complicated." Both Johnson and Brand are very much in the latter camp.

        4. JamesPond
          FAIL

          Re: Coup shame fame?

          You seriously can't be comparing Johnson with the giant statesmen of Churchill & Lloyd George? Johnson isn't fit to wipe their arses never mind be mentioned in the same sentence. He let himself get stabbed in the back at the last Tory leadership battle, he clearly has less political sense than he likes to pretend to us he has.

      2. tiggity Silver badge

        Re: Coup shame fame?

        It's a cunning plan.

        Once Brexit is over, and UK economy plummets...

        Tories oust May, call a new election.

        Labour win the election, left with poisoned chalice of UK totally shafted by Brexit.

        Labour then lose next election as Conservatives blame the Labour government for the UK now being an economic basket case (despite it all been due to Brexit induced destruction as whatever party deals with post Brexit the economy will be tanked)

        Conservatives then happy to stay in power for next few elections as they keep harping on about how Labour killed the economy.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Coup shame fame?

          It's a cunning plan.

          What, like the cunning Labour plant to shaft the country by running up a huge deficit, believing that the electorate would blame the Tories for austerity and keep them out of power for a generation? And if it's all Brexit induced, what about the twats of both Labour and Tory piling on the national debt? Does that have no consequences? If there's any particular problem, its the relentless economic incompetence of the Labour party, and the fact that for the past ten years the Tories have followed those same Labour policies of "borrow, fritter, borrow, fritter, borrow fritter".

          You appear to be over-thinking this.

          1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
            Unhappy

            Re: Coup shame fame?

            "borrow, fritter, borrow, fritter, borrow fritter".

            They had to come up with something new after there was nothing left to privatise: government spending has been inexorably upward since the 1980s but Maggie was good at hiding it with privatisation and North Sea oil.

            But ever since the BoE, along with the other central banks, discovered they could seemingly monetise government debt with impunity. governments think they've found another unlimited source of cash. That is until all insurance-based products, such as pensions start to fail…

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Coup shame fame?

              That is until all insurance-based products, such as pensions start to fail…

              Well, Bugger-lugs Hammond currently has pensions in his sights, for the sole purpose of saving his sorry, inadequate arse. FFS, the twerp has an Oxford PPE degree, surely by now people have realised that PPE is the formal academic equivalent of having a tattoo on your forehead saying "Too stupid to work"?

              Having said that, most private sector pensions have been "defined contribution" for yonks, and its the public sector that have wallowed in taxpayer guaranteed defined benefit schemes. So Hammond wants to rob the private sector pensions even more to keep his own gold plated pension. Philip Anthony Hammond: What a complete cunt.

        2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: Coup shame fame?

          re. cunning plan

          I like the idea. People like Rees-Mogg would probably won't be happy until they've repealed things like universal suffrage for all adult men. It was too much democracy that did for the Empire!

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Coup shame fame?

      The only shame is that the dimwits of the Tory party didn't support the attempt to oust her

      Which particular attempt are you referring to? There seems to be at least one a week.

      But, it's also a naive assertion. May was, by acclamation, given a poisoned chalice in 2016 and he main mistake, as with most recent Tory leaders, was to start the blood-letting at the subsequent Tory part conference and follow it with a snap general election.

      But plotters on both sides of the party are now increasingly worried that if he she is toppled, Corbyn will become the next Prime Minister as yet another leadership election will split and weaken the party even more. But they might just be putting off the inevitable: if EU doesn't agree to start negotiations on trade at the next summit then the pro-business lobby is almost certainly going to have to act to make sure the status quo is cemented as a "transitional arrangement", presumably with a cross-party vote. This will in turn probably push the fruitcakes into launching a leadership challenge.

      Poor Britain offered a choice between Militant 2.0 and a return to the Corn Laws.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Coup shame fame? @ Charlie Clark

        Poor Britain offered a choice between Militant 2.0 and a return to the Corn Laws.

        Well, looking at the US, France, the rise of AfD, the recent turn of events in Austria, and it would seem that people everywhere are electing dubious leaders and unheard of parties, essentially because of a loss of faith in career politicians (albeit Macron is a career politco). I'm hoping for the Austrian government to ask for a reunion with Germany, and Hugo Boss to go back to designing cool uniforms, although there's a few other things I wouldn't want to re-run.

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: Coup shame fame?

      The only shame is that the dimwits of the Tory party didn't support the attempt to oust her,

      They had a chance, just after the election fiasco when it was all seen as her fault. If they'd dumped her then and picked someone who's main/only task was to get Brexit right, they might have salvaged something.

      By leaving her in place they've associated the whole mess with the party instead of Mayhem, and made their own task far more uphill. Their election screwup also managed the near-impossible of making Corbyn sufficiently electable that they reunited Labour behind him.

      The real problem for BoJo, Rees-Mogg etc. is that the only thing a political party likes less than failure is disloyalty. If any of the big names tried a leadership challenge they'd be guaranteed to lose just because they started it. What they need is to find an expendable backbencher who'll trigger the challenge and then implode, leaving BoJo & the rest to pop up as the "safe" rescuers, while hoping that Gove doesn't stab anyone in the back again and let someone like Rudd win.

  5. Mystic Megabyte
    Linux

    My up is down :(

    I just now ran this command, with such a pathetic upload speed I'm never likely to be using the "cloud".

    $ speedtest-cli --simple

    Ping: 58.334 ms

    Download: 2.96 Mbit/s

    Upload: 0.36 Mbit/s

    1. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: My up is down :(

      The Internet is to tell the plebs what is what, not to enable them to have a voice.

  6. Elmer Phud
    Thumb Up

    "Shapps is personable and energetic."

    Amazingly polite, well done.

    The strain shows.

  7. Elmer Phud

    LLU?

    So, Big Boy, when will BT be able to use the fibre cabinet on MY side of the road so I can get straight fibre and not via O/H?

  8. Len Goddard

    A lovely description

    Possibly the most quietly damning description I have come across for some time:

    "Although the whole experience does feel a bit like being speed-briefed by a management consultant."

  9. HmmmYes

    Hes a cunt. Even by pols standards.

    A grubby, lying, spinning, moron cunt.

  10. wolfetone Silver badge
    Holmes

    "Grant Shapps of coup shame fame..."

    Hmm, I thought he was more famous for his Wikipedia editing?

  11. Chris Miller

    "So my village, probably to get me off their back, they came in and put FTTP in of 300Mbps. It's amazing, but then there is a gap between people taking it up and availability. Actually, largely that's because operators don't tell people it's available."

    There will probably (and correctly, in my view) be a higher charge for the higher speed. If the alternative is 2Mbps, most people will pay, but if they can already get 20Mbps, why would they* pay extra for 300Mbps?

    * Yes, I'm sure there are some exceptional use cases, and that many of them read elReg. I pay a few extra quid a month for 100Mbps VDSL rather than 17Mbps ADSL+ - but I'm fortunate that I don't have to choose between higher speeds and food/housing.

    1. Tom 7

      Re got 20Mbps, why would they* pay extra for 300Mbps?

      I have asked a few people at our local pub if they have upgraded since the exchange went FTTC. It seems most haven't as 17M seems to be enough for a family of four to watch four different films.

      1. Mark 110

        Re: Re got 20Mbps, why would they* pay extra for 300Mbps?

        It seems my only option in central Liverpool is 1.2 Mbps ADSL. None of this super speedy stuff for us oiks. :-(

        Anyway - off out to steal some wheels and smoke some crack!!!

  12. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Yeah, no... cool. Very strong.

    Reads more like a policy proposal that would be presented on W1A or by a minister on The Thick of It.

    Talked about lots. Delivered nothing.

  13. Rich 11

    And with that Shapps dashes off to his next meeting. Wherever that is.

    The eighth Circle of Hell, more specifically somewhere between the fifth and tenth bolgias.

  14. Milton

    Oxygen Thief

    Even the mildly enthusiastic tone of the interview can't conceal the fact that Shapps is basically a self-promoting, bumptious yet rather mundane spiv.

    He actually contributes nothing of value in exchange for his continued theft of oxygen.

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