It's a good thing...
... her middle name isn't Iris (or some such) as her initials would be MILF!
"Dotcom dinosaur" and Whitehall's digerati darling Martha Lane Fox CBE has been made a crossbench peer in the House of Lords. The freshly entitled Baroness of Soho*, who is the face of the Cabinet Office's "digital by default" agenda, naturally took to Twitter to announce the news. Her non-party political peerage followed …
It shows what a pathetically self centered perspective on life she has, like many others on el reg I have grand parents and great grandparents who fought in ww1&2, who is the disrespectful little shit to say they aren't proper citizens if they don't use the internet? What has she contributed to society? A website for booking flights and a karaoke bar? Well excuse me! Somebody needs to use some silicone sealand on the lords chamber and leave the taps on.
As for horrible council estates, I wonder if there are any stereotypes about her alma mater Oxford we could employ here?
While I do take your point, my 90+ year old father communicates with my almost equally elderly aunt in Australia (and with other relatives) entirely via the Internet, and uses it to research family history. She could have put it much more politely but I think the Germans are right - in 2013, Internet access should be a right not a privilege.
@Ribosome, you are correct, but I don't think the two things are mutually exclusive. My grandfather never had any interest in the internet but my gran can skype with the best of them. I don't think there's anything stopping the elderly from surfing, but I think it's beyond the pale to suggest they are bad citizens if they don't. Some people just aren't interested in the internet and I cannot see any way that makes them any less of a decent person than anyone else. Now some halfwit who lucked out on an idea once milking the public purse and being given political power, that's not good.
Just please tell me she hasn't bred!
Your post deserves a million upvotes, and I'm only able to offer you one. But well said.
And to add, what f***ing use is the House of Lords anyway? Increasingly a grace and favour club composed of the mates of the prime minister of the day. I think I preferred hereditary peers to a collection of arrogant, ignorant numpties blessed by Tony the Traitor or Dave the Feckless.
The "Lords" have consistently failed to have any point or purpose. As dishonest as the House of Commons when it comes to expenses (and with even fewer rules on what may be claimed), this bunch of parasites haven't ever held the Commons to account, or done anything useful.
Sack them all.
MLF personally is very courageous. She was in a bad accident some time ago and I don't think peoiple knew how badly she was injured. I happened to run into her (we are total strangers) in a medical setting and I couldn't believe she was alive, let alone (barely) walking. That kind of grim determination to be mobile again was impressive, so I hope her doggedness will be part of what she is bringing to the Lords, as well as a very rare hands-on experience in actual web stuff (in that House).
Let's hope they don't sit her next to Mark Thatcher. Even if they could manage to make it back from lunch uninjured and without requiring the might of the entire Algerian Military to find them I shudder at what they would come up given his history of booking flights, lastminutecoup.com ?
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I'm a great fan of her dad [a Classical historian who likes Alexander the Great and hates garden gnomes], but confessing that she shouldn't have publicly announced her title in advance and saying it was "just tweet to old school friend" does rather imply that she doesn't quite grasp the whole Internet thing.
"...the Tory-led coalition's agenda to get more of the population online so as it can deliver many more public services over the internet rather than deal with people face-to-face."
The cynicism of this take is shortsighted. Why should people not be encouraged to use online services where possible in a way which allows savings to be made to pay for needed services such as care?
"It's argued that the government's pursuit to change those web usage stats is a vanity exercise for poshos bent on helping those who live on what MLF once described as "horrible council estates"."
What's been said here is that people determined to help the poor are doing so out of vanity (not altruism, no!) and that they're posh and therefore somehow their efforts are less valid. The implication of this argument seems to be that those 'poshos' should fuck off and work in the city fucking the poor over instead of helping them, because they're going to get no thanks for the latter. This is a disgusting and infantile argument.
Er no, it's that people who say they want to help people rather undermine their credibility when they refer to the people they want to help as bad citizens living on horrible council estates. It's nothing to do with 'poshos' in general and very much to do with one specific halfwit proving to the entire world she believes herself to be superior to other people because she went to a 'proper school' and lucked out on being born into a relatively affluent family.