A chance to speak into the void

The European Commission has launched a consultation

ON THE OPEN INTERNETAND NET NEUTRALITY IN EUROPE.

Amongst the questions that are being asked are those such as this,

Are the commercial arrangements that currently govern the provision of access to
the internet adequate, in order to ensure that the internet remains open and
that infrastructure investment is maintained? If not, how should they change?

Which seems to be requesting the answer, Yes of course the internet should be taken out of the hands of independent commercial and profit making types and handed over to the disinterested and trustworthy taxpayer funded bureaucrats.
And so to the final point

4.5. The political, cultural and social dimension
The internet has become a vital platform for the political, cultural, and social participation of European citizens. Any policy decision concerning the way in which the internet functions must be framed keeping this basic premise very firmly in mind.
Question 15:
Besides the traffic management issues discussed above, are there any other
concerns affecting freedom of expression, media pluralism and cultural diversity
on the internet? If so, what further measures would be needed to safeguard those values?

What do you think? Frankly keeping the government out of the internet is a good palce to start, and discouraging the EU from waving its regulatory wand over the sector could be very helpful.
In various countries of the EU, Italy for example there have been serious attempts to control the internet for political purposes. The Eurocrats have never forgiven the way in which the first Irish Lisbon Treaty vote was influenced by internet campaigning. How they spoke in shock of the way in which the No side were fleet footed and used humour.

Now I am no expert in these matters and defer to those wiser than I, but please, if you know what you are talking about involve yourself in this consultation.

Responses need to go to infso-netneutrality@ec.europa.eu before the 30th September

Government 'not very good at internet stuff' shocker

Reported in Computerworld UK is the sorry tale of UK Government websites. This plague of the www costs the taxpayer a measely 208 million a year.
But never fear,
"a joint team from the London School of Economics and Oxford University says use of the main government websites has risen over time, with some sites now being “widely and repeatedly used”.
Well, the Number 10 petition site I can imagine has seem quite a high throughflow, admittedly mostly from people deeply pissed off with the actions of the Government. And again as more and more people get onto the web, then it stands to reason there will be a rise over time. Even this blog has seen a rise over time, mostly from people accidentaly turning up here via google and other search engines by accident. That of course says nothing about the quality of the site.

Having trawled around a fair few HMG sites over the last few years I can entirely sympathise with the next statment though,
"many sites are “text-heavy and off-putting to the user”, with complex structures that often make information hard to find among large quantities of policy material that users find irrelevant"

Indeed from what I can work out these websites are in their own terms a massive sucess. The information may be there, or it may not, it doesn't matter because joe public ain't ever going to find out.