I know I've mentioned this in the blog part of this site, but it still winds me up, I'm afraid. So, there's more of the same here. Live with it.

  So. In the news today had two stories in it - first of all, el Presidente Tony Blair bollocksing on about how the government were going to get behind broadband, going to push it to the forefront and produce more of a connected Britain. And in the same day's news, the government's e-envoy reveals that he hasn't even got broadband - he's still on a 56k. How impressive is that?

  First of all - why has it taken the government four fecking years to decide that broadband's a good thing? I remember ADSL coming on the market in '99 - OK, I'm a geek, and wanted to sign up for it right away - and the entire feeling from the government (and even from the telecoms company) was that it was something that most people wouldn't want. Not cheap at first, but being at the fron ton these things never is. BT naffed it up (big shock) but it was still an interest for me right from day one. For the government, however, they just didn't seem to see the point of things like broadband - hell, what kind of freak would want to use the Internet 10 times quicker than a normal modem?

  They seem to be getting in on the act at last though. It's taken time to do it, but they're getting in on it at last. Maybe it's because BT have taken four years to manage to cover 60% of the country - hardly impressive. Hell, they haven't even managed to ratify what constitutes broadband - NTL in particular is still flogging ISDN as "always on" broadband in some areas. No, guys, it's not broadband - it's ISDN, and it sucks arse at the best of times. So let's get this straight - ISDN IS NOT BROADBAND. And don't try to con people that it is. Some of them can't help buying into the buzzwords without knowing what they mean.

   And now we get the truly farcical situation where the government's e-envoy, Andrew Pinder, isn't even using the product he's supposed to be pushing the rest of the country to adopt. I'm not saying it's his fault - but if I were in that position, I'd be bloody well making sure that BT had made my exchange ADSL-ready. Hell, I'd have been kicking up a stink in the media every month that BT didn't get their finger out and get it sorted. But I'm not convinced that our little e-envoy (and oh my God, how I hate that word - I need to find something else to describe that job - maybe fuckwit would work better) actually knows one end of a keyboard from the other, let alone knowing which way round a motherboard goes. Come to that, I'm not convinced he knows what a motherboard is.

  I mean, we're talking about a governemt position that deals with IT. In the time this present nork has held the position, the Inland Revenue has brought in IR35, which certainly seems pretty well designed to piss off IT Contractors. We've seen the entire broadband farce, with BT showing more power than the government when it comes to all this crap. For a government that's obsessed with privacy etc., Nominet have just changed their whois policy so that more domain owners have their details published via whois - hardly a blow for personal privacy, more a blow against it. And the office of the e-envoy (SPIT!) is obviously not even aware of how to point one domain name (for example say, e-envoy.co.uk or maybe eenvoy.co.uk to the actual URL at e-envoy.gov.uk but instead either don't book them at all, or let them go to whqat certainly look like cyber-squatting services, where the domain name's taken, but there's keff all site there, just a holding page. What a sign of true genius, complete understanding of the Internet in all it's glory, and work to drive the entire "wired generation" forwards into the 21st century.

  Bear in mind, this is the nork who's supposed to be responsible for getting Britain up , running and online - again, if this were my office of government, I'd want to have something like a blog on the site, so anyone logging on could see what the keff he was actually doing. Ah - that'll explain why there isn't one then. This e-envoy is a person who, according to the bio, has never really even done a website, or worked in e-commerce - instead, he's been a partner, or a vulture capitalist. Again, hardly the most reassuring CV for this kind of role...

  I don't know, I can see that there might be a need for this type of role within government, but at the same time, surely there are better people to do the job, people who actually understand what the things are that they're supposed to be doing, and the language they need to talk. It would be nice for anyone to be reassured about any of these points, but it's not going to happen. And it's hardly a portrayal of a credible e-envoy who can't even get himself on broadband, is it?