Good Luck With That

Lifting the oldies out of the dark ages.

Adults who lack basic computer skills will be eligible for free training to help take them out of the “digital darkness”, under plans announced by the Government. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said the measure would put digital literacy on the same footing as English and maths.

Around 5.3 million Britons have never used the internet, according to the Office for National Statistics.

That’s quite possibly true. My parents don’t use it. But then, they don’t want to use it, have no reason to want to use it and are managing perfectly well, thank-you very much, so the ONS can go stick their statistics where the sun don’t shine and the government can take their training and do something very uncomfortable with it.

Ms Bradley said: “In today’s digital economy, being able to use modern technology and navigate the internet should be considered as important as English and maths. But too many people struggle to get by, with more than 10 million adults in England lacking the basic digital skills they need.

Yet my parents are getting along as they have always done and not a computer to be seen. If they want things, they use the old tried and tested methods and it works. So, er, not as important as being able to speak English.

Under the plans, publicly funded basic digital skills training will be offered free of charge to adults in England who need it, mirroring the current situation for English and maths. The proposals, to be consulted on, will see courses delivered by colleges and other adult education providers and training will be funded from the existing Adult Education Budget.

But it’s not free, is it? Someone is paying. Oh, yeah, we are…

13 Comments

  1. My Mother has a group of friends, all 70+, who are all curious about computers. For most of them it just seems to be something to do as they while away some time together.

    She has liberated a bunch of elderly laptops and tablets from my office. One of the group is resurrecting them (probably just back-to-standard plus Open Office) as he used to “be something in IT”.

    Total cost: nothing.

  2. “Around 5.3 million Britons have never used the internet”

    There are times when I wish was still one of them…

    • Me too and I work in IT, and it’s perhaps that which allows me to see the steps backwards as well as the progress.

  3. As a retired nearly-67yr old – who was a systems programmer back in the days of wood-burning steam-powered computers, I am often confronted by condescending youngsters regarding all IT matters. I’m evil enough to let them prattle on at length, then shatter their usually technically confused discourse with concise but very detailed and accurate technicalities.

    The look on many of their faces has to be seen to be believed, but they seem totally unaware that it was actually my generation – and to a large degree, my parents’ generation – that invented and developed the damned things.

    • I’m thirty years younger, but was using computers back in the early eighties. A mainframe Nixdorf. But I get patronised sometimes by youngsters who think that I’m a technologically illiterate old fogey.

  4. I dread to think what these “courses” will be like. My mother (now aged 91), decided – around 10 years ago – that she really ought to “learn about all this computer stuff” and enrolled herself on an adult education “computer beginners” course. She left the course after about three weeks because she, literally, didn’t understand a word that the tutor was saying. The problem with young (or young-ish) people trying to teach older people computers is that they, literally, speak another language. When I sat down with her and ran through the basics on her second-hand, very old laptop she said she’d learned more in half an hour with me than she had in all her classes – and I’m not “in IT,” I just happen to use a computer at work. She had no idea what an “icon” was (the “little picture with a blue W on it on the left hand side” made more sense), thought that it wasn’t possible to use a computer if you weren’t connected to the Internet, and didn’t realise that the “desktop” referred to the nice picture of Stonehenge filling the computer screen, rather than to the top of the desk on which the computer was placed!

  5. The reason for this is they want to push everyone on the grid. Everything needs to be done online and it is going to be made inconvenient to do it any other way. Bastards.

  6. Both my wife’s parents and my mother have no interest in computers and the internet and get along just fine. It is likely though, that in the future, life will become quite difficult for anyone who has no internet access. I just see this as a natural consequence of technical progress. As usual the government is getting involved in an issue that will, quite obviously, sort itself out in its own time.

  7. Dear Mr Longrider

    “… will be offered free of charge to adults in England who need it, …”

    To each according to his need… isn’t that something promoted by those nice commie bastards?

    Will those who don’t want it have a say on the matter?

    DP

Comments are closed.