08/08/2013 Newsnight

that Russia has returned to a Cold War mentality as he cancels talks

in Moscow over The Snowman affair and condemns new anti-gay laws. A

few weeks ago he and President Putin seemed so happy together. Do

we fundamentally misunderstand Russia, do they long to be back in

the USSR. We speak to guests in Washington, New York and in the

studio. The Government promised broad band fast and furious, even

to some of the most remote locations. As they push the target

back are they putting the future prosperity at risk. The future is

about lots of width in every direction. We need bidirectional

broadband, we have invested in fundamentally the wrong technology.

Tonight there are claims of an attempt on President Assad's life.

His enemies may have had a bad start to the summer, but now there

is evidence that things may be changing. Back in May the

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, enjoyed a dinner as guest speaker

at a group called Traditional Britain, now alerted on their views

on immigration he feels shocked, I will ask why he felt the need to

say so. Do we understand what makes Russia tick, there was a belief

that Russia would open up like a can of caviar and all the old

paranoia and mistrust of the west would disappear. Now President

Obama insensed by the Snowden affair has said that Russia has a

Cold War mentality, and after the passing of anti-gay laws, there are

calls from some, Stephen Fry, among them, for a boycott of the Winter

Olympics. But a democratic parliament has passeded that law

and Vladimir Putin's ratings haven't nose dived. Vladimir Putin

has again been clashing with critics inside Russia and abroad.

While still revelling in his image as a hard man.

Over the past 24 hours he has scuppered plans for a proposed

summit with President Obama by granting tempry asylum to Edward

Snowden. While Russia's new anti- gay legislation has led for calls

for the country to be striped of the forth coming Winter Olympics.

What is Vladimir Putin's agenda? Relations with the US have been

chilly ever since Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term last

year. The Russians were furious at America's Magnitsky Act, named in

honour of a whistle blowing lawyer. He -- Obama and Putin last met at

the G8 summit in June. Now comes Obama's cancellation of their one-

to-one meeting next month. The White House cited a lack of

progress on missile defence, trade, global security and human rights,

and of course there is The Snowman question. President Obama said he

was "disappointed -- the Snowden question. President Obama said he

I think Putin has deliberately decided to poke Obama in the eye.

Even before Snowden, this was not a happy relationship between the

United States and Russia. There has been a chapter of events that have

deeply upset Putin, maybe something went wrong at the G8 summit in

Northern Ireland. This has been a deliberate act decided by the

Kremlin. Don't believe any of that Russian stuff about low-level

officials having taken the decision. Putin's election campaign last year

was marked by a series of mass protests in Moscow and other major

cities. His reaction, according to Human Rights Watch was to introduce

curbs on public demonstrations and a wider definition of treason, what

they described as the worst political crackdown in Russia's

post-soviet history. The pop group, Pussy Riot, became the

international symbol of the protests. After being arrested

performing an anti-Putin anthem in a Cathedral. Two band members are

serving jail sentences in remote prison colonies for racism

highlighted and politically motivated. In June the Russian

parliament approved a new law, allowing jail sentences for

offending religious feelings. Along with another controversial new

federal law banning gay propaganda aimed at minors, which also imposes

fines on those holding gay pride rallies. It is already having an

effect. This gay rights demonstration last week was broken

up by paratroopers. Scenes like this, it is argued, help Putin

maintain his power base. He needs to consolidate his power

base and he sees it as the conservative portion of the

politician, whether using devisive issues like gays, Snowden, NGOs,

what have you, he can drive a wedge between those positions by the

liberal opposition, which are liberal and broad and western-

looking and the core conservative traditional values, as he would

couch them, he would see them as Putin's majority.

But Russia's repressive new laws could have international

implications. In February next year the 22nd Winter Olympics to be held

in Sochi, a Russian city on the black sea. The Russian Sports

Minister said while the rights of athletes competing will be

respected, they would have to respect the laws of the country.

Including the anti-gay laws. The actor and writer Stephen Fry has

called for Russia to be striped of the Olympic event as a protest over

Putin, a man who loves his macho image doesn't seem to care. Russia

is increasingingly divided, but he's not worried by the liberals or

educated urban opposition, so long as well over half the country

support him and his conservative nationalist agenda, as it seems

they do. He clearly feels he can do what he wants.

Joining us from Washington we have Julia Ioffe, a former Moscow

correspondent for the New Yorker, a LGBT rights activist, Nancy

Goldstein, Ilya Ponomarev, an activist against Putin, and

Alexander Nekrassov, a former Kremlin adviser. First of all, this

idea, particularly on the Snowden affair, that Putin is poking Obama

in the eye is one thing, on the anti-gay legislation, as it was

said in the film, this appeals to traditional Russia values, would

you say, actually, that he has Putinism, and it has the backing of

the majority of the Russian people? You see I think that both notions,

the notion about Snowden and the notion about these anti-gay laws

and many other conservative pieces of legislation that were passed

recently, they were all driven by internal politics. Putin badly

needs to consolidate this conservative part of the society,

which represents basically around two thirds of the Russian

population. His support base is deteriorating very rapidly recently

and without getting those guys together, without proving that he

is the man for the stability of the country, and for this traditional

Russian values, indeed, without that he cannot preserve his power.

But Alexander Nekrassov, it is also, is it not about distancing himself

from the west. Saying that Russia can be great again, it is the

resurgence of the church and so forth, it is the clampdown of the

whole Pussy Riot business, it is him saying that he stands for a

particular kind of, as it were, conservative Russia? In a sense,

yes. He has to respect the views of the people who live in Russia. Not

listen to what what western powers are saying to him. We saw images

there of young Russian children attacking gay protestors, I mean is

that what Russia, is that the future for Russia? First of all

this law has been misinterpreted and I think there is a lot of

confusion around it. Because this law was about protecting the

children and protecting their welfare. From what?From any sort

of propaganda, including any pornography or anything at all.

Let's be clear. That is part of the law. But the thrust of the law, it

would appear, is that it is saying that relations between people of

the same-sex cannot be discussed or represented in front of children.

Now if children get that sense they also get the sense that in itself

is wrong, do you believe in Russia that gay relationships are wrong?

Do we believe in Russia. No, I'm explaining to you about the law, we

are getting confused by that law and Mr Fry got confused by it as

well. It is about preventing children from having any

information about hetrosexual sex or gay sex all of it, together.

That was thrown out. We are witnessing now that we are only

sticking to one part of that law. Nancy Goldstein, you have heard

what Alexander Nekrassov says, that actually you got the wrong end of

the stick here, this is not actually a piece of anti-gay

legislation, it is protecting children from all sorts of things

including pornography? I would remind the gentleman that the

children of Russia are standing there on the streets watching the

police beat peaceful protestors bloody. So I don't think that is

the best influence on them either. And in fact we are going to have a

chance to see if the gentleman is correct about the interpretation of

the law. A Russian gay activist stood on the steps of a library in

Moscow and unfurled a banner that said "homosexuality is normal".

He's the first person to be arrested and indicted under the new

law, we are watching his trial with great, great interest to see

exactly how this law will be interpret. Let me put that to

Alexander Nekrassov. Was it right to arrest him. Homosexuality is

normal, what is so provocative about saying that? I can't comment

on individual cases. Do you agree with his arrest? What I can say to

the American guest, is her country support countries like Saudi Arabia

where gays and lesbians are arrested and tortured, we are

missing a big point here. Let's go through all the countries in the

Middle East and outside who America supports and arms and gives money

to and ask them why don't they ask them. Why don't they ask China

about that? Let me bring in Julia Ioffe there. You are a resident

American. Do you think we misunderstand what is happening in

Russia in the west, do we actually understand the Russian psyche?

don't think we're misinterpreting it. One thing that we are missing

here is that if you are a foreigner who is found to be guilty of

propagaging gay propaganda, which includes not talking about

hetrosexual sex, but saying that hetrosexual relationships are equal

to homosexual relationships, for saying things like homosexual

relationships are normal. If a foreigner is convicted of doing

that a Russian faces a fine, a foreigner convicted of it faces

potential jail time. And if we're talking about, China, Saudi Arabia,

they don't pretend to be part of Europe and are not party to any

European conventions. They don't sit around talking about how they

are an integral part of European culture and part of the civilised

world. They say we are China, we're going to do things our way, get out

of our business. Russia tries to be part of the west and says, when it

is convenient for Russia says, no, no, no get out, this is not

something we want in our country. What President Obama has said is

that there is a neo-Cold War going on here, that the distance between

the west and Russia is becoming greater. Alexander Nekrassov do you

worry about that? I worry about things when an American President

goes on a chat show and says things like that on a comedy chat show.

Where he's wrong is that we will always have cycles and we will

always see politicians saying things, posturing and so on, what I

see from another side is the economic ties and links are

strengthening. Americans invest a lot of money into Russia, the

British invest a lot of money. I can tell you, for example, if you

compare Russia and America, who is more friendly to Britain, BP is

being torn apart from Britain, where as BP in Russia was given 20%

of the biggest oil co-operation in the world. Isn't --Corporate in

the world. Isn't that the case, the real politic of this is there may

be concerns over freedoms and rights for gay people, but at the

end of the day it is about hard cash and up people like BP who are

presumably not going to pull out of Russia because they don't like what

President Putin is doing on the civil discourse? Putin always is

very pragmatic. He always divides the issues of civil rights and all

this blah blah like he wants to say. And real business. So, of course,

BP is more than welcome, any other western corporations, they are more

than welcome. They appear to be the first who actually praise all

Putin's wrong doings against civil society in Russia. For example the

current CEO of British Petroleum was the first one who praised

imprisonment of Karakofski, to gain more rights for his oil company to

get more oil deposits in Russia, that is very unfortunate. But the

fact, of course, Putin's own business is all in the western

world. So what he wants to do is divide and conquer. He wants

Russian society to drift apart from the western society. But he wants

his own team to be in the west. Julie, isn't the reality that these

big economic and business ties will survive no matter the regime in

Russia? I wouldn't quite put it that way. First of all, when we are

talking about the US we greatly overstatement the economic ties.

Russia is in 20th place when it comes to trading partners with the

US. There are plenty of other countries ahead of the pack. We see

that BP has scaled back its operations in Russia. BP had quite

a hard time in Russia. A lot of countries, a lot of companies do

struggle with the endemic and unpredictable corruption in Russia,

where corruption isn't just greasing the wheels of a

bureaucratic system, but where the state comes to you and extorts

money. If we are talking about the Olympics, the place where there is

the most corruption is Sochi and the projects going on around the

Olympics to prepare the city. Goldstein, on the question, let me

bring you in, on the question of boycott, you are not going to get a

boycott of Sochi are you? In fact if the International Olympic

Committee follows the own charter which says it will act against

discrimination of any kind regarding the games, the IOC should

move Sochi, I'm sure that Vancouver and Utah would be happy for the

business. I want to say on the discussion of real politics, the

rest of the world understands those politic too, that is why we are not

aiming at a target as small as the Kremlin's heart. We are aiming for

the wallet. And people like NBC and Coca-Cola and Visa and Panasonic

and other companies all understand the value of not just American

consumers and certainly not just American gay consumers, but decent

people all over the western world who will boycott their products if

they continue to espouse liberal politics and pro-gay politics in

their organisations and support a dictator in terms of a corporate

sponsorship of Sochi. The Conservative backbencher, Jacob

Rees-Mogg, was today forced to distance himself from a political

Campaign Group whose dinner he addressed in May. A posting on the

Traditional Britain Facebook page after the dinner apined that Doreen

Lawrence, recently awarded a peerage, should, along with

millions of others, be requested to return to their natural homelands.

Jacob Rees-Mogg said he was shocked and that he had associated himself

with the group. Did he know the tenor of the organisation he was

addressing? If not, why not? If so why did he have to apologise. This

was the black tie dinner at the East India Club in May at which

Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke as guest of honour. Knowledge of which has only

just come to light. It is not anything he said there that has

caused offence, but his presence at the Traditional Britain group in

the first place. They have posted derrogatory comments on the

Facebook page about the recently Jacob Rees-Mogg says he's shocked

by the comment and has disassociated himself from the

group. He says he was unaware of their views that Conservative

Central Office hadn't been able to give him any information on them.

But a very quick internet search and you can tell what the leanings

of the Traditional Britain group are. Under a list of 21 standpoints,

as they call them. You have things like "we believe our country is

best served by our indigenous customs and traditions", then "we

are opposed to internationalism and globalisation", and "we are opposed

to mass immigration and multiculturalism". The day before

the event this anti-fascism and racism campaign warned Mr Jacob

Rees-Mogg in a phone conversation not to attend. I said these are

really nasty People. -- nasty People. On the scale of being a bit

naughty to being really nasy, I think they are very dangerous. They

hide mind the cloak of being traditional Conservatives, but many

are National Associationists. did he say? It was a revelation, he

said he had given his word to attend and it is the last minute,

it is 24-hours before the speech. I'm really disinclined to let

people down. How we can possibly be giving a billion pounds a month in

this sort of debt to Skup bongo bongo land. Today's revelations

come after Godfrey Bloom was filmed making these comments. UKIP is

picking up more votes from exConservatives than any other

party. If you are a Conservative you want to speak to those groups

on the right of politics to reaffirm your credentials as true

blue, in whatever sense that might mean to traditional supporters. But

as I say, it is a slightly tricky wicket. But at the same time many

people in Britain would feel that MPs should be able to speak to all

sorts of groups without necessarily endorsing their views. In a

statement Traditional Britain group says it has no links with far right

Conservative sources say the group is not affiliated to the party and

they won't be taking any action against Jacob Rees-Mogg, that it is

up to him to justify who he goes to dinner with.

We will be speaking to Jacob Rees- Mogg in a moment. But first we're

joined by the Vice President of the Traditional Britain group.

First of all, are you dismayed that Jacob Rees-Mogg has seen fit to

distance himself from you and he says he's shocked by some of the

things that your group espouses? don't think that our group espouses

anything that millions of other people in this country espouse. We

believe in a traditional Britain. Our aims are incaps lated in our

title. I'm very sorry if Jacob Rees-Mogg has been embarrassed by

dinner, incaps lated by in our title. I'm sorry if Jacob Rees-Mogg

was embarrassed by the dinner, he didn't have to come and see us.

Couldn't he have been embarrassed by the Facebook page about Doreen

Lawrence, and saying that you abhorred her peerage and she should

go home to her natural homeland with others? Do you believe that?

think she is totally without merit and it is a further debasement for

the House of Lords. This is going on for some time. About people

going home, I can only refer you to the Conservatives 1970 general

election manifesto when they said they would halt immigration and

encourage voluntary repatriation, we are in favour of that.

You are in favour of voluntary repatriation and you agree with the

Facebook comment posted on our website? I agree that voluntary

repatriation should be encouraged and assisted by Her Majesty's

Government, yes. Do you think that there should be a halt to

immigration? Yes, I think there should be a halt to immigration.

That has been promised by quite a number of administrations over the

last 40 years, all of whom have failed to do it. We are sitting

next to Jacob Rees-Mogg, we have the photograph here, you were

sitting next to him at the diner, did you communicate your views on

immigration to him during the dinner? No, because he was there as

our guest to address us, not for me to address him. Did he seem

embarrassed at the time by the tenor of the conversation? I think

he was embarrassed that the communists at Search Light who you

have already had on interviewing had been on to him saying that...So

He mentioned it to you? Yes, he said that they had said we were

very nasty people and so on, which is just comical, frankly. Can I

just ask are you a former member of the BNP? I certainly amnot.When

you were with Jacob Rees-Mogg did you seek to reassure him about any

of your views on immigration, or were they obvious for him to read?

We didn't have him there to discuss immigration. We had him there to

hear what he had to say about a traditional Britain. We believe

that he is a good Tory and a good traditionalist and we wanted to

hear about his views on a traditional Britain. Thank you very

much indeed. We can speak to Jacob Rees-Mogg who joins us from our

Bristol studio. Having had the warning of the views of this group,

you, Jacob Rees-Mogg, chose to go to the dinner? I clearly made a

mistake. The postings we have recently seen are so deep low

disgraceful and shocking that they have -- deeply disgraceful and

shocking they have no place in British debate. Mrs Lawrence is a

wonderful and courageous woman who has contributed to British life.

Any traditional view of Conservatism, she should be

applauded for what she has done. You have heard it was a travesty of

the peerage system to give it to her and she was undeserving?

think he's not only wrong but he fails to recognise the campaign she

has run over an extraordinarily long time to expose impriorityity

in the pept. The Metropolitan Police. When you were called and

warned and it was only 24 hours time to go, you went on to the

website and saw their aims did you? I made modest inquiries and my

assistant asked Central Office if they knew the group and had any

concerns. Clearly didn't do enough work to look into what they believe.

Did you expect Conservative Central Office to have more information.

Did he they give you any information? I'm not blaming

Central Office, it was my fault, you accepted the invitation, I

turned up to speak. It is my fault entirely that I spoke it a group

that has subsequently posted these really unpleasant views. When the

party talks about immigration, do you agree with him that there

should be no more imglaigs? No. I believe that im--

Immigration? No, I believe immigration should be controlled

and I believe in the policy the Government has that we should

manage our borders effectively. I support a reasonable amount of

immigration which is very valuable to the country and has been over

the whole history of England. you hear those views does that

sound like the views of a racist then? I'm not going to make

accusations of that kind. That will be for people listening to this

programme whether they think that or not. Is there an issue, Jacob

Rees-Mogg, you have already said that you regret. I assume you

regret attending the dinner. But that actually there is a situation

where MPs have to be so incredibly careful now that there may be views,

he says, he says the views are shared with millions of people in

the country, you can't even have a discussion about these views?

think there is a difference addressing a dinner and having a

discussion, what I regret is that I addressed a dinner and to any

degree gave an appearence for approval of what they have been

saying, that would not be my intention. It is important to

discuss political views and show where they are false and wrong,

which is why I do accept dozens of invitations to speak to try to put

what I call a true Conservative view, not the really awful one that

we have had from the website of the traditional Britain group. This

happened back in me, presumably your memory until this rude

awakening was of a good night, was it? There was no queasyness on the

night, or after the dinner. dinner was a perfectly polite

affair. So another invitation to what seems like a normal, ordinary

Conservative organisation, you would go, or do you think you would

have to make further inquiries? burnt fool's bandaged finger goes

wobbling back to the fire. Mine won't be going back to any fires, I

will make much more careful investigations in future. Thank you.

The Syrian President has used Ramadan to put himself about for

the TV cameras, claiming the upper hand against the rebels and the

retaking of Homs. He has apparently made his third public appearence in

little more than a week. This time attending prayers at a mosque in

Damascus. But the rebel militant leader, Clement Attlee claims to

have fired -- the all-laem brigade claimed to have fired mortars on

his car. Is the Assad regime keeping the momentum up of the

earlier summer? It is right in the earlier summer they appeared to

have a head of steam behind them. But things have definitely not been

going their way in the past week. The pendulum of war, if you like

has swung. In several places Aleppo, north of there, there is an airbase,

which they have lost, then there is the area around latd tackia on the

coast, it -- Latakia on the coast, it has avoided the worst of the

fighting but also the northest ooft capital itself. There have been

interesting developments. If we start with Aleppo, amnesty released

pictures of the impact of a year and shown before and after shots of

a city block. And then you can see what happens when a balance alsoic

missile, this was one fired -- ballistic missile, this was one

fired six month ago and it flattens pretty much all the area in that

part of the city. Very damage heavy in that part of the city.

What happened there? There is an affair, most of the distance

between the Turkish frontier and that, we can see a satellite image

showing the layout of the runways. This is an outpost of the Assad

regime control for the past few months, besieged, it had a real of

supply base for resupplying Government village, pro-Government

villages I should say, by helicopter. For month the

opposition have tried to take it, in the last few days they attacked

with suicide bombs and used anti- tank missiles to destroy the tanks

that were guarding the place and then stormed the base. Footage has

now emerged of them surveying their spoils, damaged and destroyed and

indeed intact helicopters that can now no longer be used to help those

pro-Assad villages around there. I think the real significance though

of this is the role of militant Islamist groups, Jihadist groups. A

still image has emerged of the fighters, the man with the red

beard is said to be a Chechen commander, who led the operation.

Andrews him you see people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, apparently

Afghans and other foreign militant. This is being chalked up as a

victory for the militants. Where else has the regime been in

trouble? Another really interesting area is around Latakia.

Mediterranean port, the mill country behind it is home to the

Alawites, and his home town is near the President the tribe he comes

from. A selection of opposition groups pushed down from the north,

and during the weekend attacked a chain of villages to the north of

the President's home town and succeeded in taking lots of

position. They started off with anti-tank missiles, a similar

methodology to one we saw at the airbase, taking out armoured

vehicles, little small hilltop the forts you can see. They followed up

with armour taken from them. All this sort of stack of weapons,

another haul for the opposition, the kind of thing you expect. Once

the hilltop forts are taken the villagers flee, and thousands of

Alawites have fled and the artillery is in site of the home

town of Mr Assad. The military still have the edge? They have the

air force, ballistic weapons and chemical weapons and surveillance

systems that the opposition can only dream of. But the disparity is

being quickly eroded. All sorts of heavy weapons are now in the hand

of the opposition. While the Americans debate to send small arms

and a bit bigger, look at some of the pictures out this week. This is

a colony of tanks, at the head of it the latest models of the Russian

battle tank. The flag flying not of the Syrian National Coalition, it

is a black flag of one of the militant Islamist groups, dozens of

armoured vehicles have fallen in their hands very near Damascus.

Some fascinating imagery that came out this week, a bunker, full of

the kind of anti-tank missiles that we have seen in attacking those

earlier places. Dozens and dozens of them taken by the opposition. Of

course if you like the leaking bucket of the Assad regime means

the Russians aren't just supplying him they are supplying the

opposition, and as we have seen in the earlier footage that kind of

weaponry can be used to real affect to try to equalise the balance at

local level. According to the UN, access to the

Internet is so fundamental to the way we live our lives that it

should be regarded as a basic human right. Try telling that to the

people who live in remote parts of Britain, increasingly frustrated as

the rest of us enjoy faster and faster connections. In fact it is

the latest speed tests, Ofcom has found that the gap between download

speed between urban and rural areas has widened. The Government is

spending millions of pounds of tax- payers' money to improve access and

harder to reach parts. Is it the right technology and are we getting

the value for unm? -- money.

Today it is not just being connected, but being connected fast

that decides if families stay in touch.

Businesses succeed or fail. Nations grow or stagnate.

But not everyone these days lives and works where it is easy to get

on-line. Sometimes we all find ourselves

somewhere a bit off the beaten track. The trouble is that getting

internet access in remote rural places like this is not easy. The

Government says it wants the vast majority of the UK to get super-

fast broadband within a few years. But when it comes to remote, rural

areas like this, commercial needs can often clash with public needs.

It is not easy to make money from bringing the Internet to a place

like this. The Government says it is trying to sort that out, but it

is facing criticism, it is not doing a good enough job.

Both Labour and the coalition have recognised that connecting some

parts of the UK is commercially unattractive. So just over a

billion pounds worth of public money is available to help. It is

how that money is being spent and how fast that's causing concerns.

Peter Cochrane used to work for British Telecom, where his job was

to predict how technology might change our lives. He lives in

Suffolk, he is mightly frustrated by broadband, and couldn't persuade

his old employer to help. This village is surrounded by optic

fibre owned by the railway and British Telecom. I can't get any of

them to let me have access. I can't get any of them to put a fibre into

the village. I have even offered to dig the trench of 300ms into the

village myself with the help of the local farmers. Nobody wants to play.

He and his neighbours have put in their own fast broadband system

instead, with the help of a small entrepenural provider using a Wi-Fi

fis them, made possible by a collaboration with the local --

local church. They send a signal to that antenna over there and it is

bounced over to this tower, and just below where you and I are

standing right now is the Belfry. And behind the Belfry shutters we

have a series of antennas like this, and they illuminate the village so

everybody can get access to 32 megabits both ways. The village

includes designers and consultants working from home, small businesses

providing employment, and these days the more traditional rural

business of farming is one of the most IT-intensive.

This farm needs internet access to keep track of supplies and in touch

with supermarket customers. He's not on the village church Wi-Fi

broadband yet, but plans to switch. This morning I went into the office

at 5.30 and no internet. So we feel as if we have lost a leg today. We

are harvesting potatoes, within half an hour of our load going into

the factory, when they have done the quality control, we instantly

get a readout. If we have a problem we can go to the field and change

it immediately, without having hundreds of tonnes on wheels, which

might all get rejected. BT told us that Ufford is now on the rollout

for rural broadband as one of the hard to reach areas, and should get

fibre before 2015, possibly sooner. Nationally the picture is less

positive. Last month the National Audit

Office found that only nine of 44 rural broadband projects will reach

their target that 99% get super- fast coverage by May this year. In

June the Government shifted the target, now 95% of all UK premises

will be covered, not until 2017, two years later than scheduled.

But it is not just how how long it is taking to get broadband in place

that is the problem, but what some see as a lack of overall ambition

from the Government. The definition of superfast fast is slow compared

to others. I would argue we are not in a battle for survival against

Europe, but against the rest of the planet. If I go to Hong Kong I get

a big ga bit both ways to my hotel group. That is super-fast. People

in the UK talk about 18-20 gigabits being superfast, and an awful lot

of the time you get the magic words "up to". BT is pushing ahead with

upgrading the backbone of its entire network with fibre, on top

of existing copper connections, including a rural area like this

near the Norfolk broords. We met a man in charge of broadband rollout

at BT, Bill Murphy. We ask if his plan is ambitious enough? I think

we are aiming high, Speeds have increased threefold in the last few

years. We are second behind Japan in the G8 now. We believe the

technology is good for today and will be upgradable in the furdure.

We're delivering uploads speeds at 20-times faster than the old

generation of technology, for the vast majority of consumers and fall

businesses it will fit the bill. There could be another problem. The

way we use computers is changing, more and more we are not storing

data and software on our own computers but powerful remote

servers in the cloud. That means we need to send and receive upload and

download huge amounts of information. To do that we need

broadband connections that are fast in both directions. The trouble is,

that's not necessarily the system that's being rolled out.

I don't think our politicians, I don't think our leaders actually

understand what broadband means, because they don't actually use it.

They think about downloading music, that is not the game. It is about

the collaboration of machines and people and people with machines and

to do that you need lots of bandwidth in both directions. So

straight away we need bidirectional broadband, we have invested

fundamentally in the wrong technology. We asked Ed Vaizey, the

minister responsible for broadband if that's right? I'm not going to

try and have an argument with the former chief technology officer of

BT. But it is like an economist you talk to any number of them and they

will still tell you there is a different way of doing it. It

shouldn't be the Government who tell you what it is, if we put it

on the table and we invited bids and we said emphatically that we

would be technology-neutral. Malcolm Corbett represents some of

BT's rivals, he works from home in not so rural Woolich in south lound

done. One company is laying the gigabyte cable next to these flats.

He says this should be happening more in the countryside. Some of

the small working say they do their best to drum up business, and BT is

using public money to cover the same territory. There is only a

limited amount of tax-payers' money. If you have private sector funding

or community fund anything the communities, why not spend the

state funding elsewhere, why in the same place, it makes no sense.

way contracts for the natural rural programme were set up from the

outset meant many BT rivals felt they couldn't compete. He's

concerned that County Councils spending the money don't always

have all the information they need up front to make sure they are

getting value for money. They have a composition of one

which isn't a competition of one. In many cases they are not feeling

they are getting the best value for money, but they can't do a lot

The NAO said the Government plan is BT says it is not about unnecessary

duplication, but about providing the most reliable services.

Networks aren't for Christmas, you know, great enthusiasm, passion, I

love it, but if at the end of the day anything can be built, can it

be run or continually invested in. Can it offer a choice of supply.

the Bond family farm, in Blowfield Norfolk, they grow herbs and other

fresh produce, if they misan e-mail they can lose -- miss an e-mail

they can lose orders. They turned to a small Wi-Fi broadband set up

built around the local church. We were struckling to get to 0.5

megabits of a second, that was useless. We went to Wire Spy who do

a wireless connection, we are getting a usable and effective, not

superfast but it is usable. People in the Westminster bubble, as it is

called, don't appreciate what it is like to live in more rural areas

and don't appreciate the lack of broadband and transport and

everything else we struggle without here.

Of course people in rural areas are utterly frustrated, the rise of

broadband in the last ten years has been phenomenal in terms of

people's need. That is why we put the programme in place. You can't

wave a magic wound and it all sorts itself out, but we do have

contracts signed and we are getting under way. In the end it is public

money being spent to wire up rural communities, the Government will

want to be certain this is used to provide as many people as possible

with the best system it, as it strives to keep people in remote