Mindless rubbish.
We should examine the potential economical net benefit of potentially reducing unemployment & increased social inclusion (over the long term) over the cost of providing these low-specification machines.
Finally, at 25 I doubt you are a net contributor - so complaining about 'subsidising others' has a high chance of being hypocritical (not that you need to earn about a certain about to hold an opinion, just when you start to berate others for being subsidised).
The point im trying to make is that i seriously doubt providing them will reduce unemployment, especially when people complain of there being no free jobs for the unemployed at the moment, PC's doled out to every estate in the country in droves isn't going to magic up those jobs, and if you mean that the PC's will give them skills to find a job; again I'm doubting it. Being able to navigate IE so that they can Internet bank or check BBC news aren't relative skills, and like I said numerous councils already provide free point of access courses for adult learners wanting to learn skills such as basic computing, sticking a PC into someone's house in a sinkhole estate in Newcastle isn't going to turn them into a software programmer overnight.
As has been mentioned, library's provide computer and Internet access, online job applications can be filled in online at a job centre. Computers and Internet will aid children's homework etc. but as mentioned libraries have computer and Internet access that they could use if you do not have it, they also have books which could be used for homework, but that's a bit harder than just banging your search into Wikipedia.
You're probably right about not being a net contributer, on the overall scale, not for this isolated situation though, which is the point, not my net contribution. I've probably not paid back all the free education I've had up until 18, the health care I've had etc. etc. with my current taxes, point is I'm paying taxes right now, a **** ton of taxes, and when you hear of people starving to death or freezing to death in this country how can you not be annoyed that this white elephant of a scheme comes along when there are bigger fish to fry. The welfare state is supposed to be a safety net, not a trampoline, and this debacle is just another free bounce.
Like I said, we got a PC when I was a kid, how did we get it, my parents worked their relatively low paid jobs, saved up, probabley took out a loan for part of it IIRC, and spent quite a bit of money on a PC with a spec 10 times worse than that one listed above. Point being they expected to pay for it, not to have it handed to them by the state, because they didnt have this entitlement culture that a lot of people have nowadays. I wanted a new computer a few years back, how did I get it, worked and paid for it, I want Internet, how have I got it; by paying sky for the privilege every month.
It should be expected that certain people have to do without certain things until they can afford it themselves, otherwise what's the point? Breeds an entitlement culture, a raft of people who just get things for nothing while others have to work for it. And again when local services are cut, people die, etc. I think there are better things to spend government money on than provide people with subsidised PC's and Internet, the cost of this might be a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things but that doesn't excuse any reason to not do it, and as a person who pays taxes, maybe not net, but as someone who pays in £xxxx and receives the grand total of £0 I think I'm entitled to an opinion of how it's spent and this is a situation where I don agree with the money bein spent on this when a) money could be spent better elsewhere, and b) I strongly believe a high percentile of the participants won't use them how they're intended and thus won't improve their employability status or their social inclusion, instead as people have joked above they will be used to update their Facebook status', twitters, play Facebook games, and watch videos of cats on YouTube, with a minority, using them for learning, job applications or children's homework.
