Sticks and Stones

Today, Monday 21st January 2007, is officially the most depressing day of the year. Yep that is right, it is Blue Monday.

By using a formula involving the weather, debt, time since the festive season and general motivation levels, today is that day that nobody looks forward to. I must say I probably have to agree. I arose this morning and saw out the window nothing but grey skies, rain and trees blowing in the wind. I followed the news to see that £77bn has been wiped off the value of stocks in London (Northern Rock’s 46% increase being a notable exception). I then saw that government finances are £46.3bn in the red, and looking at most of the personal finances of the nation, a similar situation of debt is occurring.

I was now really searching to find some good news, but sadly to no avail. The government has lost more data (the MOD at fault this time), a British soldier has been killed in Iraq, flights are still delayed in Heathrow, the Diana inquest still appears to be going nowhere, and the Home Secretary is afraid of walking the streets of London alone at night.

So what good is left in the world. I could only find two things: this blog is continuing and the DFS sale is still on. Yipee!

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Private schools command a fee that parents must pay in order for their children to gain an education. With fees ranging from £8000 to over £20000, they are not cheap, especially considering that when additional items are taken into account, together with above inflation fee rises each year, a seven year secondary school education amounts to a serious amount of money.

As a lot of people, many of whom are hard working, do not have this money to pay for their children’s education, private schools are by definition exclusive. Instead 93% of pupils must go to a state school, which is free at the point of use.

Currently, the lucky few that do go to a private fee-paying schools, are at an advantage due to tax benefits that private schools receive. As registered charities, schools do not charge VAT and have other tax regulations that charities follow. Faced with state schools producing every lower grades (although they are frequently artificially inflated and may be in un-worthwhile subjects), the UK’s Labour government has decided that a solution to its problem may come in the form of removing tax concessions from private schools. This is through tougher rules enforced by the Charities Commission ordering that private schools must serve in the public benefit in order to maintain its charity status.

For the £150m in tax not paid by private schools, parents save the government an approximate £2bn by alleviating dependence from the state sector. Furthermore, academically selective private schools place gifted and talented children (who may be supported by bursaries) in an environment where they are surrounded by other willing and eager to learn, so that their excellence can be fully nurtured. These children will then go on to secure jobs in which their intelligence can be used to make vast improvements to the world, from medical breakthroughs to setting interest rates. Surely this is proof of the public benefit private schools deliver?

Hence whilst exclusive by definition, private schools foster a culture of learning, and alumni most certainly go on to serve for the public good, whilst their parents have saved the Chancellor from adding to the budget deficit through more school places. If people are fortunate enough to afford it, the state should not try to limit a good education.

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This weekend has seen London’s first incandescent light-bulb amnesty. With many believing we need to rid the streets of “the most successful city in the world” (to quote the Mayor’s office) of guns, knives and drugs, people are right to question why so much energy is being devoted to make war on the traditional light bulb. The humble bulb has been illuminating our lives and our homes since Swan and Edison began production in the 1880s, but now the eco-warriors want to see its final blow.

The rival, an energy efficient bulb. The ones being given away this weekend are all produced by Phillips and are sponsored by British Gas and B&Q. The idea is that the Mayor colludes with three big corporations in order to try to pull off a publicity stunt. The “amnesty” ignores the facts that energy efficient bulbs do not produce the same quality of light, take considerably longer to turn on, don’t work with dimmer switches which are extremely common, take a lot of energy to produce, will leak mercury into your home and look hideous. All of the sorry excuses for the inadequacies of the energy efficient bulb can be found on the official web-site.

However one accusation remains unanswered. By driving to B&Q, just to exchange one (or two) bulbs, will the carbon emissions from my car not greatly exceed those that I will save by switching to energy efficient bulbs?

It really is time to focus our energy on real improvements to our lives.

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Earlier Udayan posted about the marvels of DRM free music available from Amazon.com. I too would love to rid my music collection from DRM. Having music purchased from iTunes, I feel trapped into Apple’s system, and hence am more inclined for the next music player I buy to be an iPod, else I will have to re-buy the music I already own.

However, in today’s globalised world I do have a problem: Amazon will not sell MP3s to me as a UK resident. I have a credit card which is quite capable of making payments in dollars, and the marginal cost to Amazon of me downloading the file would be the same. I suppose a song entering my computer in the UK would mean it passes into the EU, and is therefore subject to the EU’s common external tariff, but surely the value is below the threshold of impost duties? Do import duties even apply to downloaded material, which is technically just a series of ones and zeros? I am no expert on EU law, but it would be a shame if this was the reason I cannot download Amazon’s DRM free music.

Perhaps the reason is the record labels, together with Amazon colluding to extort as much money as possible out of the already ripped-off British consumer. The pound is still relatively strong, and the people of Britain are accustomed to pay extra for things that our American friends can have for much less (Televisions, iPods & car fuel to name but a few), so what would be the difference if the record labels and download sites also took their chance to squeeze the British consumer?

This weeks saw Apple, the music download programme which boasts the largest market share, commit to a harmonised prices across the European Union. This was following an EU investigation into the price of songs for countries in the Eurozone at €1 where as on the UK store the price was £0.79 (both prices far more than the US $1). Within six-months, the UK will only be paying the high amount that the rest of Europe has to pay, an estimated saving of £0.05 per track according to the BBC. This is remarkable news for the British consumer, but the question of why pricing is not at the US level still remains.

I warmly invite executives from Apple, Amazon or any of the record labels to give me a reason for not charging the US price (even giving a buffer price to accommodate for medium term currency movements) to the UK consumer.

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Most of the media that I am regularly exposed to seems to be having a frenzy over the big 2008 election. The US presidential primaries and caucuses which are now fully underway, with possibly the closest race for many decades, have been grabbing the air-time, column inches and blog space. However there is another crucial election taking place this year, one that will have a significant impact on the lives of 7.3 million people (more than the combined population of Iowa, New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nevada). I am referring to the third election of a London Mayor which takes place on the 1st of May.

Battling for the votes of 5.3 million eligible Londoners will be Ken Livingstone (representing the Labour party: the incumbent, first, and so far only Mayor of London), Boris Johnson (the gaff-prone Conservative MP who represents Henley) and Brian Paddick (the Lib-Dem who used to have something or other to do with the police). There are 111 days left to go, and the campaigns are off to an unofficial start tonight, with a debate between the three main candidates being aired on ITV.

I will save the analysis for nearer the election date, but I will vaguely quote an exert shown on the 6 o’clock news:

Ken to Boris: You will be a disastrous mayor.
Boris to Ken: And you already are.

Let the campaign begin!

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