Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne yesterday (July 8) announced the details of the first Conservative budget.
Richard Higgs, CEO of brightsolid, a private cloud provider that owns and operates world class data centres in the North East of Scotland, has provided the following comments:
“Missing from yesterday’s budget was technology and, more importantly, the infrastructure required to help the UK get online. While the Chancellor’s fuller policy paper gives a nod to digital, with investment in Next Generation Digital Economy Centres, without the right infrastructure in place the benefit will be limited. We congratulate the cities that have gained centres for the next generation digital economy but wish the government would make a similar commitment to connectivity for the whole of the UK, enabling significant productivity gains for every region; everywhere and everyone (and their devices) – it’s embarrassing that the city of Stockholm has more connectivity than the whole of Scotland put together.
“We love the new living wage and like the clampdown on aggressive tax avoidance. We also support the introduction of more skills apprenticeships. We have, for many years employed a social responsibility programme, including apprenticeships in our technical operating areas of business. Programmes like these have significant positive impacts both socially and economically. We are proud of our digital and gaming heritage here in Dundee and believe that university isn’t for everyone, but that everyone should have the opportunity to enter our industry to grow our already recognised digital economy here in Scotland.”