What a fantastic initiative by Barnet Council Leader Mike Freer. I wish him every success with this idea.

A panel of civil servants to decide who deserves the old 10 PC's? Why don't they just give them to help the aged to distribute to people they know need them. Why is it that everything in Barnet Council needs a committee. Rather than Sarah commending Mike Freer, she should suggest that he cuts the bureacracy and uses the established charities to get rid of old, redundant computer hardware.

As the article says Mr T, the scheme is going to be administered by the Barnet Voluntary Service Council. You clearly have a not so hidden anti-Freer mentality and its quite sad that you take the word of a journalist as fact. I don't know the ins and outs of the scheme and neither do you but rather than see the good you look for the negatives. Council gives away computers rather than send them to landfill and thats a bad thing?!? Until you have tried to run something in the public sector maybe you should try to be balanced.

As an after thought, they could cut out all the bureaucracy by just dumping all the old equipment. Who benefits then Mr T?

Sarah certainly wins the Order of the Brown Nose award for her sycophantic praise.

As with most things, the devil is in the detail. What steps will the council be taking to ensure that someone isn’t given a computer containing the details of, say, housing benefit claimants? The computers are being provided with Windows XP operating system. Will Microsoft be due a licence payment for its software and, if so, who will pay it? What about the cost of other software?

Who will bear the cost of training residents to use the computers? Who will provide technical support? As these computers were almost certainly connected to a network, will modems be provided for the users and, again, who will pays for this? This apparent act of charity by the council could actually cost the taxpayer money.

The announcement smacks of being a cheap publicity stunt. As Rog T suggests, it would be far simpler to give the machines to charities with experience of redistributing second hand PCs. For all we know, the council may have given away its old computers in the past to good causes without publicity, so why is the council making such a song and dance about this now? Mike Freer’s desire to be the next MP for Finchley can’t having anything to do with it, surely?

Simon,

The article says

Decisions on who will get a computer will be made by a panel of council officers and a representative from Barnet Voluntary Service Council, who will administer the scheme.

Now I read this as saying that the recipients would be decided by a panel of Barnet officers. I didn't say chuck them in a landfil - you did, I said it would be more efficient to give them to a charity such as help the aged who have an established network. You may find it more fruitful to actually read what I say before posting a response.

I don't happen to have an anti Freer mentality. He just happens to be the bloke trying to make out he's doing a marvellous job by setting this scheme up. I happen to think everyone in Barnet is allowed a view on how the council is run, not just the clique in power. You seem to view the great unwashed public in Barnet as Serf's from your comment. Hardly Healthy.

I may not have run a council, but the things I run are very successful in very competetive marketplaces. I can assure you that I know how to run a business, having built three from nothing. One of the secrets is I try and ensure my company doesn't waste money. I suspect that as it is not their own cash, Barnet are less careful