As the current ‘Internet Generation’ grows up, what the government is proposing will happen naturally. However, trying to suddenly force it upon genuinely technophobic older people will not only be counter productive, it will cause huge stress in a group of people the government is supposedly trying to help.

This is a bad idea!

The end result would be they would have to get someone else to assist them, thereby exchanging the savings in costs to become different actual costs in other areas. Alternatively, older people would simply ignore the requirement to complete forms in this fashion. This would result in unfilled paperwork, lost benefits, lower standards of living and less help provided to this most vulnerable group of people.

When MLF gets to your age, someone else will be wielding another sort of stick I would imagine. And I would also imagine she may respond more positively if it were more of a carrot!

I would think in general if we took time to understand other peoples’ situations and ‘real worlds’ a little better we may find more creative ways of working with them to solve all sorts of ‘issues’. And that will always be true, generation through generation.

“What it would mean for people like me, is that I would have to take over everything for my parents (aged 86 and 85 with no computer and no wish to have one) where finance is concerned thus removing their independence and a great deal of their privacy and dignity.”

Think again, Ms Lane Fox

In addition to training, would government provide an adequate and reliable broadband service, buy computers for all those who don’t have them, pay for their ISP and security subscriptions, and for printers and the peripherals. My guess is that, like me, many older users would be confused and daunted by online billing, form filling etc, and would want to print everything off. Indeed, I think many people would be panicked by the mere idea of it.

It doesn’t sound like a nanny state to me, it sounds like a big bully state. Government has a duty to provide the services that people need, not to coerce them into using services they do not want. For goodness sake, at least where the retired are concerned, leave us in peace to embrace such technologies as, individually, we feel able for and are comfortable with. If some of us feel that a computer would be an alien and unfriendly presence in our lives, we are entitled to be allowed to live without them. When our generation has gone, and those who remain have all been familiar with computers from childhood, perhaps that will be the time for Martha Lane Fox to wield her stick.

Grrrr!