WILL someone please explain to me what the benefits are of dishing out free computers and IT equipment and services to people -- other than the political proponents of this malarkey hoping to benefit from the votes of the recipients?
Hard on the heels of 2,500 homes in one of Blackburn's rougher areas getting buckshee PCs courtesy of the government's Wired Up Communities scheme -- in other words, courtesy of the poor old taxpayer -- there now comes a council project to give oldies across Blackburn and Darwen free set-top boxes that turn their tellies into a basic computer and plug them into the Internet.
And on top of this come subsidised e-mail accounts.
Why is there this obsession with this new technology and a belief that people need to be able to make use of it--- when what is happening is no more than the hi-tech equivalent of giving people free goggle-boxes, a free set of encyclopaedia to browse and phone calls subsidised by the rest of us?
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