question for my UK friends: broadband in the UK

I got into a conversation about broadband with a colleague from the UK who said, in part:

"The USA, however, is frequently held up as an example of a 'cable country', and from what I've read, much of it is carried on telephone poles. Unfortunately, in the UK, the cables have to go
underground, so unsurprisingly, the UK, and indeed Europe in general, is a bit behind on this. Most people in the UK consider themselves lucky if they can get broadband at all - it's only in the last few years that most of the UK has received it. Even so, there's still only about 97% coverage, and even with this, figures from the EU last year showed that less than a quarter of UK households actually *have* broadband."

Is this correct? It seems pretty grim.

Why do all cables have to be buried?

I need to reload the Bartlet icon that schizokitty made me...

Aaron Sorkin's Jed Bartlett gives Barack Obama a pep-talk, New Hampshire-style.

Read all of it, it's good, but this exchange is at teh core of it:

OBAMA: The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET: Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.

OBAMA: What would you do?

BARTLET: GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Thanks to my friend Andy for the link.

I think this is a bit unfair to dodos...

Second Annual Rubber Dodo award goes to Gov. Palin for lies and attempts to conceal lies about the environment