Budget 2012: 'Super-connected cities' and video games tax credits

[funkydan]

George Osborne has announced which cities will benefit from a ?100m pot of Treasury cash aimed at making them "super-connected". They include Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle.He also announced a further ?50m to improve net access in "smaller cities" and pledged a tax credit scheme for the video games industry.Mr Osborne said that he wanted the UK to become "Europe's technology centre".The super-connected cities were first announced in Mr Osborne's autumn statement when he pledged ?100m to create 100Mbps (megabit per second) citywide networks in 10 urban areas.He said at the time that the four UK capitals - London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, would be the first to benefit.'Brilliant'The other big budget news for the tech sector was the pledge for tax breaks for the games industry.Richard Wilson, chief executive of video games industry trade body Tiga, had spent the last four years lobbying for these: "This is a brilliant decision by the government and terrific news for the UK video games industry. "It is also a decisive victory won by Tiga through audacity, determination and endurance," he said."Like a boxer knocked down by his opponent, we refused to accept defeat and kept getting back in the ring.This victory will benefit not just the UK games development and digital publishing sector but also the wider UK economy."Mr Wilson predicted that tax relief for the video games sector should generate and safeguard 4,661 direct and indirect jobs, offer ?188m in investment expenditure by studios, increase the games development sector's contribution to UK GDP by ?283m and generate ?172m for the Treasury.In 2010, the then Chancellor Alistair Darling promised tax incentives for developers, a pledge that he never delivered because Labour lost the next election.The news comes as struggling video games retailer Game said that it intended to file for administration.source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17457975Chancellor

[funkydan]

Sorry, I tried to put in paragraph breaks using return but computer said no - still, it's an interesting article and a great leap forward for the UK gaming industry

[QualityChimp]

All poignant and pertinent news reportage, however all I could see was this:

Richard Wilson, chief executive of video games industry trade body Tiga, had spent the last four years lobbying for these said."I don't belieeeve it!"

[funkydan]

All poignant and pertinent news reportage, however all I could see was this:

Hahaha

[toythatkills]

?100m to give cities that already have good internet, good internet. Money well spent.

[charlesr]

heheh. That's exactly what I was thinking.
And what on earth are people going to do with that much internet anyway. You can stream HD movies with 6MB. Pretty can only be for illegal stuff yeah? So government sponsors piracy.

Good news about the tax breaks.

[monel]

Is it only me who remembers the old ISP ads in certain magazines, with things like 'Download a song in 30 seconds'? Also figures for films and so on? That was before there were many (or any) legal sources to purchase media online, and way before sites started streaming material.