Superfast Broadband to help keep unemployment down.

Gordon Brown has unveiled an ambitious plan to try to stabilise the failing economy. Part of the plan is to try to kick start bank lending in order to help businesses and private borrowers. The new idea to supliment this is to create up to 100,000 new jobs.

It has been calculated that by 2010 one in ten of us will be unemployed with those working in retail being particularly at risk.

Brown’s plan owes a lot to Roosevelt’s New Deal which initiated a programme of public works including building new dams and roads in order to create jobs whilst improving America’s infrastructure during the Great Depression. New rail links are planned as well as improvements to schools (many of which permanently use ‘temporary’ buildings).

The PM also hinted at at improvements being made to the UK’s Broadband infrastructure. This would create jobs as well as help us to keep up with other European countries who are already starting to plan their fibre optic upgrades. A fibre optic system would mean a faster phone line able to provide high speed wireless broadband.

“”When we talk about the roads and the bridges and the railways that were built in previous times – and those were anti-recession measures taken to help people through difficult times – you could [by comparison] talk about the digital infrastructure and that form of communications revolution at a period when we want to stimulate the economy,”

Gordon Brown