Broadband for all - not sure it's fair

The Digital Briton interim report was released this week and it revisits a scheme mention by our government toward the end of last year. The scheme I refer to is the one where £300m would be spent on providing an Internet connection and the means to use it. Which would be nice, except that once again the majority of us who are not rich but earn enough not to be considered poor are forgotten about. Yes, you'll only get all of the above if you are poor.

Some may say fair enough, the digital divide is growing and these are the people that need protecting - true, that's what a good society does but there are different ways to achieve this objective.

Part of me wonders if there is a segment of society that needed to be spoon fed everything and cry foul play when it isn't. There were days when the working class were proud and would want to better themselves, today I don't see that.

Okay, so what would I do with the money? Well, I would spend £300m on revamping our libraries and providing high speed Internet links and Internet cafe services in the library. You want Internet access for homework or finding a job or research, use the one in the school or library. What's wrong with that? It's a more known quantity than the other idea making it easier to plan and budget for!

Then there is also the plan for the government to force ISPs to provide website filtering packages. This is nanny state meddling, there are an abundance of packages out there that do this and would provide parents with more control. It surely would be cheaper to start an ad campaign that informs parents of what's available, or better yet, parents start taking responsibility for their children and their children actions (such as sitting with younger children while on the web)

For me, this is yet another policy designed more for grabbing headlines than helping the population. It's not paricually well thought through and is another example of Labours belief that if you through money at the problem it'll go away - afraid not!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]