to not want to pay 50p a month on top of my phone bill to pay for other people's internet when there are OAP's who have to choose between food and heat in the winter?

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

Isn't food/gas/electricity more important then internet access? I don't mind paying 50p but there are more important things that people need then high speed internet.

Cant watch TV on i player here either or Skype as the speed is too slow!!

Quite right morocco. Seem's a silly way to tax people.

Still got a mumsnet habit! though i have to wait until all the townies have got to bed so i can get online - plays havoc with my sleep routine

You're missing nothing elastamum!

Read my post above Fluffy. I could NOT mark GCSEs online; I could NOT put money into someone's bank account from another country with the click of a mouse; I could not keep in contact with someone serving overseas quickly.

If the government spent less on their unnecessary quangoes and diverted the money there, then less children would live like that. Unfortunately, within that there will be some element of parental choice as to how money is allocated from the household budget and some will not spend it on heating.

My gran had no central heating in her house; just a gas fire in the back room and another in the front. She moved out of there in the 90s. My maternal grandparents had neither central heating; nor an inside loo or a bathroom of any description....my Gramps died in 1979. They weren't poor, but hadn't modernised the house as that was what they were used to. No central heating used to be the norm, and my paternal grandmother lived until she was 93, so it didn't hurt her!

We had no central heating when i was a kid - am i really that old???

We didn't either until I was about 10 in 1976.

But what did we all do before the world of the internet? You still have a phone right?
I can see the other side of the coin though, when I was a child my house had very little heating, we had very little fresh food but there was always enough money for cigarettes and beer! My priorities are not going to be the same as someone elses, food/heating/no damp housing are always top. I can live without broadband. Maybe it's just me and my way of thinking.

A phone ain't no good for marking scanned GCSE answers on line....or ringing hot sandy places either.

You may not like the levy; I objected to paying more on my water bills when in Cornwall to clean the beaches up for all the grockels/emmetts who came down and blocked our roads, littered the countryside, and then went away again, leaving an underfunded county to pick up the tab.

There are certain things that I greatly resented coming out of my income tax and VAT, but I had no choice.

Of course, the easy way around this is to ensure that no-one who has winter fuel allowance pays the levy.

Do you live without broadband though? Will you give it up? When I left UK in 2006, it was only just beginning to appear on the radar in rural Cornwall and it cost a bloody fortune. It just makes life easier. It means that the elderly lady across the road can order her shopping online and have it delivered and not have to go out when the weather is foul. It means I can look at the rules on taxation and then ring if I have a query, rather than ringing and hanging on for hours and then still not getting an answer. Yes, I agree about your priorities; but once all that is sorted, and for many people it is, then broadband is essential, especially for rural communities; it's like needing two cars. If you want community centres (and the broadband would have to be brought in) why not equip each house that wants it?

I really don't mind 50p though so it's not about that. I just think there are better things. I'd be happy if those who were on income support/poorer pensioners didn't pay. I would be happy to pay more so they didn't have to. Life would be nice without broadband, ds would struggle though, I do agree that it makes life easier but it also makes people hermits, there's no need to leave the house if you can bank/shop/chat/pay bills etc online. For some people, doing these chores is the only way they get contact with real people.

But people surely can decide if they want to be hermits or not? I don't foodshop on line in Belgium as I'm not really aware of any supermarket that does it, and I like to see what I'm buying. The same will apply when we move back to UK as Ocado don't seem to do my patch of Cornwall.

However, the chores I hate doing like bill paying etc are quicker online and mean that I don't have to in UK, get the car out to drive to the nearest town, find parking, pay for parking and then go into the bank to pay a bill. It's different strokes for different folks.

Yup. It is, you are right.

it's not just about making it easier - it's often about making things possible

Problem with this IMO is it's a flat tax, rather than taken from the main pot. It just sounds more palatable to tell everyone it's only 50 each than to take the full amount in the normal way, and that be the headline, but it does mean that it's inequitably paid in terms of disposable income.

I think it's pretty vital, though, given they are talking increasingly about education being online. If school resources, feedback etc. are mostly accessed via the internet then they do need some way to make it universally available. It isn't too hard to realise that a child who can access Google has an impressive resource at their fingertips, compared with one who can't. I think the broadband extension is a precursor to this.

Another article says, "Children from jobless and low income families will receive a free computer and free broadband access under major plans from Department for Children, Schools and Families to close the digital divide amongst young people. The £300m investment will help make England one of the first countries in the world to ensure every single young person can use a computer and the internet at home for their education."

There's not much point giving free computers and broadband subscriptions if there is no broadband available in the area.

I see your point, however, my dad, lovely as he was, would buy computers etc, then sell them when he needed the money. What's to prevent others doing this? If the government are giving away free computers what's to say people won't sell them?? ( I am a terrible cynic)

Fluffy - what's to stop someone registering for an OU course, getting the course grant and computer grant - getting a computer with the money and then flogging that??????? - nothing

Fluffybunnygonebad - if someone does that and their kid suddenly has no online access, then questions will probably be asked. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you can hide, is it, whether or not a kid can access the school's intranet outside school hours? Besides, though some parents won't care if their kid can keep up at school, I would imagine a lot more would - your Dad wouldn't sell your schoolbooks, would he, and it's the modern equivalent really.

We didn't have any books in our house Qally.

Good point FAQ.

If people are really peed off about wasted funds, how's this: to get disability grants at university level for things such as dyslexia, you need an assessment by an educational psychologist, which you supply to the student finance department. These cost hundreds of pounds. The state does not fund them. Therefore you either need a school with one on staff, or to wait till you reach university and apply there to be assessed at the university's expense, which takes time, and is apparently not always possible.

If, on the other hand, Mummy and Daddy are loaded, they send you to an educational psychologist and get your statement. Then you apply for your 4 grand laptop, and professional note-taker for lectures, all to be awarded months before you turn up for Fresher's Week. Many of these kids come from backgrounds so wealthy they weren't bothering to apply for any other funding at all - even though the basic application asks for no income details, as it isn't means tested. So very wealthy kids had the taxpayer fund an upgrade on their existing laptops - and the parents could further top up the agreed outlay if they wanted to - while poorer kids got zilch.

It takes a special kind of genius to create a system whereby study support is means-blind, but you need means to be able to access it in the first place.

And then there's the loophole whereby a parent with a kid at university does not count as a dependant. You have to fund 5 kids through uni with a very small allowance for each, but if you have one kid in higher education and your wife fancies an art history course, she gets every single means-tested grant possible. I once assessed a case where the family income was comfortably into six figures, and the full loans and non-repayable grants were due to the wife, because her son's also being a student meant she was assessed as a single person without any other means of support. If her son weren't at uni, she'd only have got the basic loans. This wasn't their fault - I can only imagine they thought we'd screwed up in the assessment - but it is the system.

What I'm rambling on about in sleep deprived incoherence is that there are far more blatant abuses of the taxpayer's generosity than trying to ensure everyone in the country can get fast broadband, and all kids can access online educational resources.

Fluffy - you had books from school, surely? Thought all schools supplied those?

I can see both sides of the discussion.
Alot of people use their internet for incredibly important things like bill paying, exam marking etc, so why should they be charged more for living in rural areas.
However alot of people use it for pure entertainment only, so why should we be charged for them to just keep up a MN or porn addiction?
I suppose we cant base it on the "entertainment only" people though. Im probably talking aload of shit as had hardly any sleep, I'll post this, take DS to CM come back home and take a look and thing WTF?
On a seperate and completely irrelevant note I only order things online if they are only available online, I prefer to go to the actual shop and buy it from there, keeps those people in a job.

I think the point is about access to broadband for all areas of the UK, rather than if or how someone chooses to use it. The potential for it should be there. I suppose you could compare it to mains drainage as an example, or having a telephone.

We got scammed by Talk Talk who charge for a much higher width of broadband than they can provide - some days ie most days the service won't load.
We are very remote and need broadband to send animal movement forms etc plus the Scottish government in their wisdom have made the grants for improving farmland an online application only (Internet Explorer so that scuppers at least 30% of rural farms as they either don't have broadband or it is useless.
We would be happy to pay a little more for a decent service but think we would be the last on the list to receive it.

In a way I see what you're annoyed about (the state doesn't seem to be very good on priorities), but then this could be an incredibly good thing. Now, it is possible to do many jobs with just the internet. A friend of mine works for an IT company, and can basically work anywhere she wants, as long as she has a broadband connection (though she got a wifi phone, so all she needs now is a mobile signal). Imagine what this could mean for employment rates in more isolated areas. It could also mean that people will feel less obliged to work and live in somewhere like London, but instead be able to stay in say, Cornwall, and work from home, rather than leave their community. It may go someway to reverse the urbanisation trend that the Industrial Revolution started.
However, attitudes about working remotely need to change. Although my friend ADORES her flexible working arrangement, she says she's had to give up on the idea of having a "career".

Why should the jobless get free computers and broadband? Can't they just use the ones in the library like i had to whilst saving up for mine?