{"id":32850,"date":"2019-11-15T10:41:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T10:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=32850"},"modified":"2019-11-15T10:41:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T10:41:38","slug":"boris-johnson-calls-labours-pledge-for-free-broadband-for-all-a-crackpot-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/boris-johnson-calls-labours-pledge-for-free-broadband-for-all-a-crackpot-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson calls Labour&#8217;s pledge for free broadband for all a &#8220;crackpot scheme&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Labour&#8217;s pledge for free broadband for all &#8220;fantastical&#8221; during his appearance on the special election programme on BBC 5 Live.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Labour announced yesterday that if elected, they would nationalise Openreach, the digital network arm of the country&#8217;s biggest broadband and mobile phone provider.<\/p>\n<p>They said the cost of nationalising BT would be set by parliament and paid for by swapping bonds for shares.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if he would introduce free broadband on the programme, Johnson said that what he would not do is introduce &#8220;some crackpot scheme that would involve many, many billions of taxpayers&#8217; money nationalising a British business.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>What does the public think about Labour&#8217;s pledge?<\/h2>\n<p><strong>#freebroadband<\/strong> has been trending on Twitter all morning, with people sharing their views on the new pledge. Reactions have been mixed.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/AlexJCharlton\/status\/1195245610150039553<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/bethre13\/status\/1195226643389984768<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">You need internet to apply for disability\/jobseekers allowance, and applying for jobs in person is almost unheard of now. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/FreeBroadband?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#FreeBroadband<\/a> will open up possibilities for the most vulnerable rural, typically elderly working class people, who these charlatans claim to care about. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kM1khORxx5\">https:\/\/t.co\/kM1khORxx5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ghostface Kafka (36 Chambers) (@thekafkadude) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thekafkadude\/status\/1195267133762134016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 15, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Words: Hannah Wilson | Image credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/10246637@N04\">Foreign and Commonwealth Office<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Labour&#8217;s pledge for free broadband for all &#8220;fantastical&#8221; during his appearance on the special election programme on BBC 5 Live. Labour announced yesterday that if elected, they would nationalise Openreach,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":32855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}