Headington residents in new fight over phone mast (From Oxford Mail)

On the very day Fuhrer Brown announces that increasing broadband availability will be key to our national recovery, his minnions in east Oxford are off the mark ahead of even Mick Haynes in donning the tin foil hats to call for it to be stopped in its tracks. No doubt there's some kind of election coming up for them to create an issue for.

Let's face it, there is no school within an area that even might be affected if there were adverse effects. And again, whilst they can say there is no proof that these things do cause any problems all they like, there is equally no real proof that they can. Neither St Michael's, St Joseph's, St Nicholas's, New Marston Primary nor Rye St Anthony (which they probably don't care much for anyway - being a private anathema even to Catholic socialists I imagine) are close enough to be affected - the signal strength drops off exponentially. Rye and St Josephs in any case are already closer to existing cells on Brookes and the hospital respectively and St Nicholas's is closer to the mast off the Marston Ferry Road.

Vodafone clearly needs this facility - as a subscriber I know only too well that you cannot get a Vodaphone 3G signal in the lee of Headington Hill: when I tried to use a Vodafone mobile broadband a year or so back, I could connect only at prehistoric speeds. By having to connect to more remote cells from this area any potential danger is actually increased as handsets have to work harder to achieve a reliable signal of any speed - and the one area where there is any real indication that there might be any danger is in the handset clamped to the side of your brain for long periods at a time. The real threat to wellbeing and competitiveness in the area is for more people to be kept in Oxford's sixteenth century aura and not be able to access the latest mobile communications potential.

So much for concern for their constituents' interests - deliberately holding back their opportunities (I suppose one of which is the opportunity better to hold their politicians to account by participating in the modern technology driven participation mechanisms - so that probably suits any politician).

Was it not a politician who once saidd "The only thing we have to fear...is fear itself" - how ironic that a politician's greatest weapon is actually whipping up largely disproportionate FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Security word: "pick-call" something which the people of Marston will not be able to do freely if they get their way.

Everytime a mobile mast is proposed out come the predicted protesters and of course none of them own or ever use a mobile phone themselves. One word comes to mind: NIMBY.