And now some low-end competition from an unexpected source
I was talking to Andrew Robinson, he designed this:-
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/922345933/codebug
Apparently when he showed it to the BBC they said "were having that" and proceeded to use his design concepts and most of the circuitry without even any acknowledgment. A bit unethical in my book.
Hmm, not nice.
Why is the BBC providing computers to school children? Is that normally under their purview?
The BBC's remit is to entertain, inform and educate.
And now also it seems, to implement government welfare policy
How many countries still require a licence to possess/ use a television receiver? Or a radio receiver?
OK, so I understand it funds the BBC whose educational qualifications are unparalleled, while the Australian government is earnestly trying to get rid of the ABC (as well as essential renewable energy such as wind farms), but it still seems a little, well, feudal or something like that. 
You do not need a license to possess a television in the UK, nor to use a radio receiver. You do need one to watch live TV however. But not for long, as part of your fellow countryman's price for getting this current crop of scumbags elected as a government, is to do away with the BBC.
This process has already started, and quite soon our public broadcast offerings will be just a shit as it is in the rest of the world, and we will have to pay far more for a much lobotomized offering from a cranky Aussy.
Anyway, I did enjoy the cricket yesterday. 
Grumpy_Mike:
I was talking to Andrew Robinson, he designed this:-
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/922345933/codebugApparently when he showed it to the BBC they said "were having that" and proceeded to use his design concepts and most of the circuitry without even any acknowledgment. A bit unethical in my book.
Copyright covers the expression of ideas, not the idea. I think extending moral rights to ideas is a chilling effect on innovation. It's puzzling why people in the maker/open source/creative commons community wish to do that. If Microsoft owned the idea of windows, then Linux would not be possible. Should Linux come with a disclaimer "Based on an idea owned by Microsoft?"
The concept of owning the "look and feel" of a product was pretty much thrown out.
In open source software, no one seems to care if ideas are re-used in other projects, the whole point of open source is to share ideas. In the hardware world, people seem to care about correct attribution, even for things only loosely based on other projects. The difference seems to be about the expectation of making money from the project.
The stated aim of CodeBug is to get kids using micros, so the Micro:bit seems to achieve that. CodeBug also claim their project is "Creative Commons", and raised money on that basis. I can't find any source code for CodeBug, nor a statement of which CC license they use.