Free laptops for poor kids

[Flip]

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8449485.stm

[Itchy]

Its called a pre-election bribe.
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Spain 2008France 2007Big one 2009 We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In the end, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

[cyberglass]

Stuff like this boils my blood.

I work my arse off to pay for my broadband connection yet some job dodging benefit grabbing scrote gets it for free.
Why the hell do i bother to work all i need to do is have 3 kids with the nearest slapper and im set for life. Id get a house an allowance free dental and prescriptions and now a laptop and broadband.
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DL650 Vstrom 2004
DRZ400S 2003
Yamaha R1 2005

[Flip]

I think it boils most peoples blood. What's wrong with a text book, a note nook and a pen? Apart from having a spell checker doing half the thinking for the kids, I don't see the need for it.

I can think of better ways for the government to spend 300 million pound.

Itchy. Nail. Head. I think.

[smegballs]

This is laughable. Why laptops which are inherently complex and expensive. For genuine educational/office use the sys requirements are astoundingly small.

Just a simple desktop with running tiny processor/ram etc etc could be assembled and handed out to kiddies if thats what they "need".

When I was in school there was about hundreds of computers that all I had to do was ask and be granted access. There is no need to whack out a load of laptops for poor kiddies.

Also if I went through school again I wouldn't get a laptop for sure depsite being one of the poorest kids there. Due to some complex circumstances, my family never qualified for the subsidised stuff (free school dinners and the like) despite being fantastically poor....

[Flip]

How many of these laptops will be fcuked in a week because of the Dads getting viruses from porn sites?

[The Shaggy D.A.]

Nearly as many as those getting put on eBay.
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[bazza]

Neither of which compares to the numbers that will end up in the local Cash Converters, unopened.
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"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
'98 Ducati 750SS, '08 Suzuki GSX650F ©2004-2014, Bazza's Harmless Banter

[GhostRider]

Or sold to "Dodgy Dave" from the Dog an Duck for an Oz of supa skunk.

GhostRider
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I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

[Mushroom]

oooo OOOO OOOOO

[Seb]

[Kickstart]

Hi

£300m for 270k laptops. Thats over £1100 each. How much money are they wasting?

All the best

Keith
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[rhone81]

Let's humour Gordon Brown for a second...

You're concerned about a generation growing up computer illiterate and want to reach as many of them as possible. You have £300m to spend (is the £300m just for the hardware or is that including the running costs and contracts to run the scheme?). What to do?

What about giving kids the $100 laptop? If it's good enough for kids in developing nations...? It would also allow the Pious One that chance to do something for the Third World instead of just rattling his slack jaw. Imagine if the UK was to put an order in for 270,000 of them?! How much would that lower the production costs for the laptop by? 15%? 20%?

Anyway that's just me imagining what he could do if he had any interest in doing good. The cunt.

[Mushroom]

that is a lot per laptop with a bit of thinking thrown in a lot more could be had with that money But at least its not going on 50 Cal rounds Or speed cameras! .

[lostboy]

Laptops for poor kids, great in theory , shit in practice , can't wait to see what the fucktards come up with next, no offense to the poorer families of britian, but I managed without the latest gadgets as a kid and if they are are offering 270,000 of these machines how many will be allocated to the kids in the midlands and north of the country? or am I being optimistic in assuming that any will get further than luton?
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Never invite a vampire into your house you silly boy!

[Mr.Everready]

[Skudd]

I know last year or the year before, a letter from the schools was sent out asking what pc/laptop/internet access you had in the home. Stupid me had bought a pc with internet ready for when my kids needed it so said we had access to a couple of pc/laptops and the internet. Those who said that they hadn't ( even though they did) got a voucher for the internet start up and a voucher for a pc, that was two years ago from the local (labour) council.
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[GhostRider]

[Kickstart]

[Flip]

[Bendy]

So the free broadband presumably requires a landline? How many truely poor families will be forking out for one of those when PAYG mobile is so much cheaper?

Would it be so difficult for an ISP to come up with an 'educational' package where access to certain stuff is restricted? At least then we wouldn't be paying for them to download the latest blu-rays and spend the whole evening on Facetube...


This free laptop business was being discussed on the radio last night and countless parents were calling in to say that there was no way kids could do homework without the internet. Err... couldn't the teachers just make sure that the internet-ty stuff is taught in class and the homework doesn't need it. Don't kids get textbooks any more? Hell, from what I can remember, if our homework needed printed material, it was often a photocopied handout cos there weren't enough textbooks for everyone to have their own.

I don't believe kids should be disadvantaged just cos they're poor but I'm not convinced the internet is this magical education resource... I think it encourages a short attention span, cut-and-paste, skim reading mindset, and lets not forget how much of it is completely fictional or biased bollocks!

[Robby]

Either...

Kids will get laptops with a full keyboard before they get mobile phones, thereby learning to type in full before they learn text talk. They be computer literate and current when they start work, and the laptop will massively cut down on the amount of paper waste.

Or...

I'll be buying a cheap, never used, high spec laptop off ebay.


It's only £300m. We have £250m earmarked for subsidies to buy electric cars, but you can't buy an electric car to get the subsidy yet.

[pa_broon74]

This government has always had thing for aspirational behaviour, it works in their favour for people to want to aspire for more, if they get more they'll more than likely come to the conclusion that it would be hard to live with less. When they get to that stage, their benefits and job (if they have one) becomes indespensible to support their bloated existence.

The point is, doing something like this helps keep people in line. It's not even a carrot and stick thing, it seems to be all carrot, but when the Clampetts discover the wonders of 21st century communication (www.pounderstretcher.com) they'll soon begin to think they can't live without such powerful juju.

If you're moderately well off, it's your mortgage, bills and perhaps your kids that keep you on the straight and narrow, keeps you paying tax and not rocking the boat. If however your poor and perhaps not working, the gov need to use other methods to maintain control, instead of heroin (which they don't mind at a push) they use magic trinkets like laptops and MP3 players if #1 scrote didn't punch anyone in the head at school that week.

I might be being a touch cynical, but you get nothing for free from this government, you just don't. If it seems that way? There will be an alterior motive. Materialism is good as far as modern governments are concerned, it's the opiate of the middle classes they are the pushers...

Ummm...


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Didn't catch anything.

[D O G]

Slightly o/t, but this was my resulting rant when I heard about this, or rather when I heard Ed Balls (teehee) talking about it.

He said they would be funding this through 'efficiency gains', which has, in fact, been Brown's main line on how we can clear the defecit but yet also keep the same level of service.

My question on this point would be (and I've yet to hear anyone ask it outright), why the fuck there is such a large mass of inefficiency in the government? Have you been royally fucking up over the last 12 years and wasting my money? Surely that means you're incompetant?

My follow up to that would then be: If you have already identified these inefficiencies, why have have you not already done something about them?

The laptops gift is a symptom of the ingrained default to bullshit which exists in all top ranking politicians.

They say we have no money, but on the other hand they give away something fairly pointless, then bullshit about it.

They put a clearly airbrushed picture up on a billboard, and then sidestep the question as to whether it has been airbrushed by saying 'I write the policies, I don't do the pictures'.

These guys cannot allow themselves to give a straight and honest answer to any question, even if the truth would be better for them. It is that simple, that is the core truth.

They all posture and lie, all the time. It is the only thing they know, and it is for that reason why I will never, ever vote for one of those despicable cunts.

[smegballs]