“In five years’ time, the creative industries [in the UK] could be as powerful as the financial services industry has been for the last 10 or 15 years,”

As snow threatens on a cold, grey day in the financial services capital, Sunday’s Observer offers a silver-lining for us creative types.

Communications minister, Lord Carter’s unveils a plan for a multi-billion-pound, high-speed broadband network, promising to turn the country into a digital nirvana by the time the London Olympics start.

Gordon Brown regards it as a national infrastructure project that will place Britain in the vanguard of the information age, a 21st-century equivalent of the huge public works programmes that helped lift the US out of the Depression.

By the time it is complete, 27 million households will be able to watch movies, news and documentaries, listen to music or play computer games online, quickly and cheaply. Britain’s status as a leading player in the entertainment industry will be secured for a generation or more, citizens will be better informed regardless of their social status, and the economic dividend will be huge.

Read more in The Observer, Sunday 1 February 2009