Information Superhighway Robbery

It’s rip-off Britain once again.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has compared UK broadband with service available elsewhere in the world. In terms of low cost, we are 19th out of the 30 richest nations in terms of what we pay to our providers. The average British price is £14.50 per month. Not surprisingly it is less than £8 per month in the States, just over £8 in France, and apparently averages a mere £5.40 in Sweden (the my Swedish resident namesake will have to confirm this).

Again, not surprisingly, we are getting less for our money. Our 8Mbs maximum speed is apparently the internet equivalent of molasses. And were that we all got 8Mbs! I’m paying for 8 but tend to get a bit under 2. I should be getting 5.5 (because after they sell you 8 they tell you to only really expect 5.5), but thanks to line noise at the exchange box, it ain’t happening. BT seem to have no motivation whatsoever in cleaning up the noise, as this would probably mean spending money.

In Japan, they get 100Mbs. In case you haven’t done the math, that’s a bit over 50 times what I’m actually getting.

I’m not saying I’ve haven’t made progress. I started with a 1200 baud modem on a 8088 machine in 1989. Things have changed a lot since I got on the actual Internet with a 14.4 on a 486 in 1993. Nonetheless, the world is passing me by.

Potter Profits

The excitement is building toward the release of the latest Harry Potter book. It’s not particularly exciting for me, because I’ve not read any of the books. I was going to pick up the first one a while back, but just had too many other things to read. But nonetheless, the world is abuzz with Potter fever.

One place you may not find J. K. Rowling’s latest blockbuster is Asda.  Asda intended to sell the book for $8.97 when the cover price is £17.99 (yes, that a bit more than $36 these days).  Potter publisher Bloomsbury didn’t like that. But what they really didn’t like was when Asda accused them of “blatant profiteering”. The giant retailer also accused the publisher of “attempting to hold children to ransom” because the cover price is twice the average child’s pocket money. Bloomsbury said the comments were “potentially libelous”. I’m not sure how they could be potentially anything after they have been printed, but I suppose that’s for Bloomsbury’s solicitors to work out.

Bloomsbury is says it not withholding the book because of Asda’s comments, but because Asda owes them money, though they wouldn’t say how much. Asda was much more forthcoming, saying they owed Bloomsbury £38,000 while at the same time Bloomsbury owes them £122,000.

It is a testimony to the popularity of the series that the publisher can afford to cut out the second largest retailer in the UK and an initial order for 500,000 copies of the book. Asda is convinced it is going to have the title in stock by paying their outstanding balance today.

I have a hard time seeing Asda/Wal-mart as having the high moral ground when it comes to complaining about profiteering, just because they are making a popular book a loss-leader. And does every child have a right to Harry Potter at a reasonable price? It’s not exactly food, clothing, or shelter. Also, since the release date of the new book has been known for ages, children have had time to save up their pocket money. Is there a reason Bloomsbury shouldn’t maximise their profits?

No More Money for Nothing

Record companies are not happy these days. CD sales are slumping. It is predicted that this will be the worst year in nearly three decades. Of course artists and record company executives will still make lots and lots of money. Obscene amounts of money. Just less obscene amounts.

Legal digital downloads are much less lucrative than CDs, especially because customers can download just the tracks they want. Band and artists can’t put out two or three really good tracks on a CD and expect to get the full whack for it.

And what’s got to really irritate the grey suits that are used to running the industry? Not listeners who file share, but bands who don’t need them any more. They have to wonder how many more bands like Arctic Monkeys are out there. We are in the midst of a serious paradigm shift.

And I didn’t mean to leave out file sharing altogether. Record companies weren’t so worried when file sharing was making a cassette copy of your vinyl, or even your CD, for a friend. Really, that’s all that’s happening now. The only difference is that people have a lot of friends, with the means to share with all of them, and they are completely unbounded by geography.

I think the record companies are eventually going to completely lose out on the file sharing argument. I’m not saying they have a valid position in intellectual property law, but what we have is a new way of thinking about intellectual property due to the realities of the information age.

It’s a bit like why am I going to buy Encarta when I can use (and even participate in) Wikipedia? Or newspaper websites that have tried to charge for the news – still trying to live in the age of the cover price. Most of the time, I can find someone else with the story for free. The Times recently revamped their website and tried to put the newspaper edition with all the stories behind a subscription. When I went to have a look just now to see how much a subscription to that edition is, I discovered that it is free again, even though they haven’t publicised this and you have to know which link to click on (BTW, it is the “Our Papers” link on the right-hand side of the top row of the menu).

Record companies executives are just going to have to come up with other ways of making money that are viable in the current marketplace. Otherwise, they are going to have to put up with less stratospheric salaries.

Stringing Me Up

I stopped by a local music store this afternoon to purchase a guitar pick. It took the idea of Rip-off Britain to another level. A single Dunlop Tortex .60mm cost 80p ($1.60).

I’m sure there has been some inflation of plectrum prices since I left the States. The last price I remember paying for an identical pick was 45¢. May they are as much as 80¢ now and it is just another example of prices being the same figure in dollars as they are in pounds.

A set of 12-string strings starts at about £13 ($26). I found a set of Martin strings from an eBay shop in the States for $9.69 (£4.85) including international first class postage. The best price I found for the same thing from a British eBay shop was £7.70 ($15.40).

I looked at guitar prices and again I haven’t been in the market for a guitar for a long time, but I can’t imagine that some of the guitars I looked at were anywhere comparable to the price for the same instrument in the States. I played a Freshman cutaway six-string that had good action and an okay sound for £400. Surely this wasn’t an $800 guitar in the States. I would have said maybe $400, even though the body of it felt a bit plastic. Freshman assures me that it wasn’t, even though their guitars are made by cheap Southeast Asian labour and shipped to Scotland.

Music appears to be an expensive habit in this country.

Killing in Iraq

Someone else’s bad news may be good news. I came across a liberal blog that was complaining that Congressional Democrats have withdrawn legislation to require abortifacients to be stocked on all military bases. Foeticide activists are outraged.

“The situation is unconscionable,” says Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation (NAF). “If you are a military woman in Iraq, and you are raped, it is this country’s obligation to make sure you have access to emergency contraception.” Something tells me that Saporta would feel the same way if you are a military woman in Iraq and can’t keep your legs closed. After all, you wouldn’t be surprised to know that the NAF favours the absolute right to abortion on demand.

Saporta is concerned about this because a survey paid for by the US Defense Department found that almost a third of military women reported being the victim of rape or attempted rape during their tenure in the military. Of course this raises two issues that she doesn’t address – why aren’t a third of male soldiers being charged with rape or attempted rape and what are women doing in a war zone? Resolving the latter might solve some of the problem – forget the silliness that women belong in combat situations with men.

But back to the main issue. Cases of pregnancy from rape are very rare. Nonetheless, this is always dragged out as an excuse for protecting foeticidal rights. It’s emotive, but philosophically useless. One crime is unrelated to the other. If every new life is uniquely its own, the circumstances under which it was created are irrelevant.

I suppose the NAF can’t make an strong a case if they say men and women living together in close proximity, in an emotionally charged atmosphere is asking for at least the same level of fornication as you get in civillian society. They don’t want to say that if we are going to pander to those who can keep their pants on outside the service, then we should at least equally provide for them in the service.

I just have to mention one other thing about the NAF. Their website has lots of information on how to stop Crisis Pregnancy Centers.  Instead, the NAF has a toll-free hotline which “offers women unbiased, factual information about pregnancy and abortion in English, Spanish and French.” Did I mention that the NAF is, openly and by its own admission, a professional association of abortion providers. Surely they have no vested interested in shutting down CPCs and anything they tell you about abortion (except about the wads of cash they are stuffing into their pockets and what they do with the chopped up little bodies) is trustworthy.

The Truth About Migrant Workers

For all of it’s wonderful rural positives, the Shire is a very ethnist (what the papers and the Government would erroneous call “racist”) place. Whenever the subject arises in lessons (and it often does, even when we are not particularly studying racism) large numbers of pupils have been programmed from home to say nasty things about migrant workers.

The other day, one of them said, “My dad said we shouldn’t buy local produce, because that just brings in more illegal immigrants.” When I said, “What illegal immigrants?” She didn’t know what to say. I noted that the Russians and Urkrainians work here under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme and the Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks are free to live and work here like any citizen of any EU country. In fact, because they are from the new A8 countries, they have to work. The French, Spaniards, Germans, and Belgians can show up and loaf about if they want, yet still enjoy all the benefits of the socialist state.

A 2005 study showed that the per capita revenue to the Government generated by immigrants (£7,203) was higher than that for the UK born (£6,861). The study went on to show that government expenditure per capita on immigrants was lower (£7,277) than for the UK born (£7,753). So the pay more taxes and they use fewer services.

According to the Treasury, whilst foreign-born migrants make up 8% of the population, they generate 10% of our Gross Domestic Product. So they produce more that’s worth more. Where exactly is the problem?

They have substantially lowered the age profile in the Shire and in the country, because most migrants are between the ages of 18 and 34. This means there are more workers to pays the taxes that pay the pensions of all the UK born over 34s who will soon become over 65s.

If you go into the Hooterville city centre, you here lots of Russian, Polish, and various other Slavic-sounding languages. Why? Because they are spending money. They are investing in the local economy (or the economy of Tesco, M&S, Woolworths, and other national chains).

People complain because they nick stuff from shops. All the shops have shoplifting warning signs in multiple languages. A third of the shoplifting is reported to be by Eastern Europeans. This means that two-thirds is by UK born people. Of the proportion of prime shoplifting-aged people, this is probably fairly representative of the population. The difference is that of they are Russians or Ukrainians they can be deported. We’re stuck with the locally bred riff raff.

But despite all the positives migrant workers have brought to the community, you don’t have to ask around very much to find plenty of people more than happy to slag them off.

The Next British Invasion

It would seem that Britain’s biggest retailer isn’t rich enough and the US doesn’t have enough supermarkets.

Tesco is expanding in the States, with an ambitious plan to open three stores each week until it has 50 stores by next February. That’s just the first phase. The next will see another 50 stores. There will be 30 Tescos just in Phoenix.

You would think their presence in 12 other countries would be enough, but I suppose the US market is just too tempting. Tesco hopes to eventually have as many store there as in the UK.

In the UK, there is no need for any sort of unique selling point. It’s just a matter of “We’re here, we’re everywhere, and we have everything.” There are already plenty of chains in the US doing that, so Tesco’s own-label products will have no artificial colours, flavourings or trans-fats. They will promote healthy living. Too bad they don’t do that here.

With £7.2 billion in annual sales, I suppose they aren’t too worried if their £250 million per year American experiment doesn’t break even by the end of the second year as planned.