Lost for words over laptops

EARLY in January Gordon Brown declared a new educational initiative: ‘Laptops and broadband for all!’

Of course, there’s a multitude of magnificent things you can do on a computer: type up revision notes, research into postmodernism, watch Democracy Live from the BBC, compare schools like sports teams…

Okay, let’s get real! Laptops are used for three things: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This amounts to joining either offensive or plainly moronic groups on Facebook, stalking Stephen Fry on Twitter and discussing the Nazis in the comment section for a video about the Tweenies on YouTube.

Fast-paced internet has only increased the rate at which sensationalised rubbish can be spread around the internet. It means that nobody communicates properly anymore; everybody is too busy checking Facebook for their latest notification update, and nobody thinks about what they are typing. Well, I’ve had enough!

It’s about time people got up, left the house and undertook a valuable British institution: moaning. Yes, of course you can do this on the internet behind a false name. But that is not the British way –?it needs to be out, loud and proud.

So, do as I did a couple of weeks back: have a neighbourhood pub lunch. You’ll hear the latest goss, learn a whole new load of witticisms and help save the local. Plus you’ll be helping to revive the beauty of the language and true meaning behind the words.

Perhaps the Government will then realise the importance of words, start to think before they speak and communicate truthfully (okay, that’s unlikely – maybe impossible). But a reconnection with the language may help us to expose the true inequalities in society, currently hidden behind a wall of cold governmental jargon.

So, I say don’t give out free laptops, instead invite people out for lunch. That way the language can flourish. And instead of a generation of Daniel Lynches we can have a generation of Milnes, Dahls and Fitzgeralds.

By Chad McDonald