Marginalised?

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Next week is the annual Get Online Week where more people will be persuaded to sign up to the internet. The organisers hope to encourage 80,000 to sign up.

The ONS has reported that, whole 99% of those aged 16-24 use the net, only 40% of those aged 65 or more have. Age UK is so concerned about this that it has warned that unless more can be done to help older people get online ‘there is serious concern that they'd become more and more marginalised members of society’.

I’m now over 65 and use the internet every day, but I can’t believe that those oldies who do not are becoming ‘marginalised members of society’. Oldies who do not have computers may not be able to order their shopping online or keep in touch with friends and relatives via email, but they are hardly marginalised.

Let’s keep a sense of proportion here!
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Something To Be Applauded

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One of the most worrying aspects of modern life is the apparent increase in the number of paedophilia cases reported. We seem to hear of them almost every day.

Paedophilia has undoubtedly spread in proportion to the increased accessibility of the internet, and I for one am very careful about what I put into a search engine in case I access something nasty by mistake.

Most of us can think of youngsters we know and the expert but innocent way they use their laptops, mobile phones and digital cameras. Indeed, research from Ofcom published last autumn showed that 80% of five to seven-year-olds use the internet and that among nine to 11-year olds, 94% do so.

So a new children’s safety campaign run by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety is to be applauded. The campaign uses cartoons to show children as young as five that people they might meet on the internet are not always what they seem.

The internet is a great thing, but it is both sad and inevitable that it will be used by predators for the sort of things that disgust and which few of us can understand or tolerate.
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Wow!

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The power of the internet - and the grapevine - was demonstrated in the last few days when the chap responsible for a hotel chain’s website mistakenly advertised rooms in the Crowne Plaza in Venice at just €1 a night per person. instead of around €150 a night

Unbelievably, nearly 230 people cottoned on to the error and made bookings for an average of six nights per person at the hotel before the mistake was corrected.

The hotel, part of the Intercontinental Hotels Group, is honouring the bookings and will bear a loss of around €90,000. Wow!

On the other hand, what marvellous, if expensive, publicity!
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