Odd month, August - the media’s traditional ‘Silly Season’.  

Gaps between reality and fantasy shrink to invisibility. Media channels confuse politics with stand-up comics at the Edinburgh Fringe. Experienced politicians head for the long grass leaving their junior freshers to be earnest, if not entirely honest. And, between bouts of side-splitting hilarity, Ma manages to splutter ‘Well, you couldn’t make it up’ and Pop starts quoting scripts from some old show called ‘Yes, Minister’.

We all know that ‘Summer’s lease hath all too short a date’ and we’ll have to sober up in September but meanwhile there’s a poetic beauty in watching the prancing paradox skip amongst us like young deer wandering out of the park into urban areas.

The annual Prancing Paradox award is, this year, hotly contested.   Finalists include donors Tony Blair and Bill Gates (although no-one is foolhardy enough to accuse the latter of seeking redemption) and Ministers Cable & Pickles whose well-intentioned but Treasury-tied subordinates are looking forward but walking backwards towards each other.   Governmental A&E units are on standby but a crash may still be avoided with a last minute policy swerve.

There are times in political life when the stakes are so high that seriousness is not exclusively licensed to expert nerds. But when these doom-laden moments arrive in mid-August the best antidote is laughter, uncontrollable fits of giggling, thigh-slapping, snorting and tears a-streaming.

The minister may wonder what he said that was so funny. What he actually said was, "I can't promise solutions, but what I can do is promise dialogue. We will make rapid progress. When I know what progress means, I will let you know."

His ministerial colleague welcomed this ‘clarification’ prompted by the one government agency that seems not set for closure despite its Delphic deliberations. It reminds one of the Civil Service job advert for a very senior position that listed amongst desired candidate credentials, ‘a proven ability to manage ambiguity’.

Prequalification for finalist selection was signalled by the dual announcement of the aspiration to become an advanced digital nation within the current Parliament and the deferment of plans for a 2Mb/s (download only) commitment to a ‘universal broadband service’.  Bonus points arrived with cancellation of a review into the iniquities of taxes on fibre and, in a final burst of energy for award-winning status, the minister welcomes a threefold increase in tax on local fibre broadband schemes to coincide with calls from another department to encourage local community action to remedy decades of under-investment in essential infrastructure.

As we report the final stages of the race, it’s looking as if Defra, whose Prancing Paradox was a late entry, may be classed as an ‘also ran’. Their ministerial team (unlike those at CLG) have disappointingly so far failed to welcome the impressively authoritative Rural Coalition report, ‘The Rural Challenge’.  That’ll be the one that points out how rural economic growth and societal development is hugely dependent on radical investment in local broadband access networks.  They probably think it’s not their problem. The coalition’s views are equally applicable in many urban areas but, hold on guys, let’s not stray across departmental boundaries – if we carry on like this we’ll have Prancing Paradox entries from Health, Education and the Home Office.

The industry’s FttH experts (i.e. anyone other than from BT or Virgin Media) will look at the latest fibre-tax ‘clarification’ from the Valuations Office, scratch their heads and weep into their beer as yet another nail is hammered into the plans for locally-led economic transformation.

For reasons too nerdish to explain the experts will, one suspects, be unable to communicate to ordinary mortals and financial journalists (and government ministers) the nuances of iniquities that flow from the VOA’s jobs-worth logic where ‘consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative’.  That at least should ensure that this year’s Prancing Paradox award is truly sustainable – well, for at least a month or until Conference season, whichever occurs earlier.

What all of the factions in this long-running saga seem not yet to have fully grasped is that we are not talking about some marginal improvement – a mere upgrade or a few emergency repairs to the not-so-super-highway pot-holes.  What is at stake is as transformational as the great post-war completion of the switchover from DC to AC electricity. It is more fundamental than the shift from manual to automatic telephone exchanges, the introduction of mobile phones, cars that don’t rust, mains drainage or the conversion to North Sea gas – which latter, by the way, is still not available to a third of all rural households. But we so often let go of things we’ve not fully grasped.

And this is not just a marginal issue for rural areas or domestic life, or the local news media, or small-business, but is increasingly a very big business concern - including the entire public sector.  Their future efficiencies are crucially dependent on the collective capacity for multiple, secure, virtual private networks reaching to every corner of land – including traffic lights, farms, pumping stations, environmental monitors, building sites, electrical transformers, remote health monitors as well as city-based employees working from home when the points are frozen.

The switchover from ‘copper-to-the-home’ to ‘fibre-to-the-home ‘(FttH) will probably count as the UK’s last great infrastructural challenge.  It’s the one that will have the greatest impact on reshaping the economy, developing a 21^st century society and crashing the barriers between the outmoded silo’s of government departments – those self-preservation societies that we voted to reform.  This year’s Prancing Paradox – jointly awarded to BIS and CLG - may perhaps mark the deferment of any such aspirations until well after the next decade.

But, seriously, there is hope – or at least, advanced wishful thinking.  Anatole Kaletsky predicts in his new book ‘Capitalism 4.0’ that ideologues, ‘will be displaced by pragmatists who will follow Franklin Roosevelt’s call for “bold, persistent experimentation” – and even better than experimenting on the citizens of one’s own country is to observe the experience of others.’

Before crossing roads we urge our children to look both ways and then only cross when the road is clear.  We do not advise them to walk backwards towards those going in the opposite direction.  But August is not yet over.  It’s far too early for the pantomime season but let’s practise.  Altogether now, and this time louder, ‘Where’s the Prancing Paradox?’  ‘It’s behind you!’  Oh yes it is.

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This editorial was written for members of the Communications Management Association (CMA) whose collective annual business expenditure on communications products and services is around £13bn. The CMA is a part of the British Computer Society.

Readers of this editorial also viewed ‘Communicating Communications’ and ‘Local measures need local measures’.

Anatole Kaletsky is editor-at-large of 'The Times' and chief economist of GaveKal Research. His new book ‘Capitalism 4.0 : The birth of a new economy’ is published by Bloomsbury.

For a view of this this topic from Australia see BuddeBlog

Translations for non-UK readers:

Defra – Department for the environment, food and rural affairs

CLG –   Department for Communities and Local Government

BIS –    Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

VOA –   Valuation Office Agency

A&E -    Accident & Emergency