Surprise surprise, ISPs are angry at suggestions that they will be forced to disconnect customers for copyright infringement.

This isn’t exactly news as far as copyright holders are concerned. We’ve known for ages, because of the capricious and unhelpful way that ISPs act when we ask them to remove illegal copies of our material, that they are, on the whole, supporters of copyright infringement. They may not admit it, of course, but since it drives use of bandwidth, encourages customers to use their services and results in a net revenue stream for them, it’s pretty easy to see why they would support it.

It’s also interesting to consider the comments of Rupert Goodwins, one of ZD Net’s editors. Interesting because the press, particularly the dead tree variety, has also been largely pro-infringement—as long as we aren’t talking about their content, anyway. Predictably, therefore, Goodwins trots out the ISPs’ tropes about how expensive and impractical it will be, how it might infringe peoples’ human rights, how there isn’t enough evidence that it’s really harming peoples’ livelihoods and so on. He even at one point talks about ISPs having to “cut off their own customers… for no reason”. Not to mention implying that the changes to the proposals have something to do with Peter Mandelson’s meeting with David Geffen.

It never fails to amaze me just how stupid some people are. The row about the NHS that was started in the United States has led to the BBC starting one of their “Have Your Say” threads (which always seem to be full of the most depressingly banal rubbish), but in this case I just can’t help commenting myself; the thing that annoys me the most is posts like this one:

Hows this for the NHS - My Dad had a heart attack 2 months ago, within 4 minutes the paramedics arrived with in 25 mins we were in A&E and within 2 hours he was on a specialist ward, life saved! - All this for Free, Oh forgot it must be Evil! - MURRRHAHAH!!

Since then I have been so impressed by the NHS and their staff, I have been applying for jobs with them, even on less salary than I currently am.

This is one Brit with pride in our NHS and its staff

john s, wigan

where the commenter appears to think that the NHS is free. It isn’t. It’s free at the point of use, but that just means that we pay for it through taxation.

And boy, do we pay for it. Government spending on health is listed in the 2009 Budget as £119bn, much of which is covered by the £98bn that was collected in National Insurance payments. National Insurance, for those who don’t know, is an over-complicated form of income tax that is paid by both employers and their employees so that the government can increase it by a notional 1% and actually get 2% extra (of your gross salary) in tax. It’s widely criticised (and rightly so) as being a tax on employment, and the excuse for its existence is that it’s there to pay for the NHS and the state pension scheme¹.

But it’s very unlikely that the health figure on that graph includes payments related to debt interest on NHS-related projects, or the costs of PFI, all of which must come from somewhere (hint: that’s your pocket, stupid). See, for instance, this or this. Quite a chunk of the £28bn of debt interest payments shown in the Budget will relate to these kinds of things. There’s also a very suspicious £72bn of “Other” shown in the Budget…

Anyway, even if we believe the figure of £119bn (and I don’t know about you, but I’m skeptical that that number is the whole truth of it), the NHS costs us each around £2,000 per annum (or between US$3,000 and US$4,000 depending on exchange rates).

In reality, not all of the population pays National Insurance; it’s only paid by those in employment, and even then not everybody pays. The Office of National Statistics tells us that 28.93 million people are currently in employment, so the figure per working person is more like £4,000 per working person, per annum, assuming that everyone pays which I’ve already noted is not the case. (For the benefit of U.S. readers, that’s between US$6,000 and US$8,000 depending on exchange rate fluctuations!)

Of course, we can also look at this another way, which is to consider what “the man on the street” actually pays in National Insurance contributions, including his employer’s contribution (which, whether he knows it or not, comes out of what his employer is prepared to pay for him to work there).

According to average weekly earnings figures from the ONS, in May 2009, average weekly earnings were £440. Using the NI tables HMRC publishes, we can work out roughly² how much someone on average weekly earnings pays £36.30 per week in Employees’ contributions, and a further £42.24 per week in Employers’ contributions that they usually don’t see (though it still effectively comes out of their pay, of course). That’s £78.54 per week, or a little over £300 per month. Or £4,000 per annum. Yes, that’s right, a person on average income has to pay over £300 per month for the NHS (that’s US$450 to US$600 depending on exchange rates).

So is the NHS free? No, it isn’t.

How does it compare with the U.S.? That’s a difficult question to answer sensibly and I’m not really going to attempt to do so here. But I note that here in the U.K. it’s quite likely that a family of four will have two parents out to work, especially if both are on average incomes (in which case the total NI contribution is around £8,000pa, or US$12,000-ish), while the National Coalition on Health Care estimated that in 2008, employers paid on average US$12,700 for a health plan for a family of four. Again, as an employee you may only be expected to front up US$3,400 of that, but the rest still comes out of what your employer is prepared to pay for employing you.

There are lots of other factors, of course. While the NHS theoretically provides dentistry and optometry and so on, in practice those are usually paid for separately. And I know in the U.S. there are excesses, limits and co-payments to worry about.

Daring Fireball comments that

— people thought that what Google meant by “beta” was what everyone else means by “beta”.

on the basis of this from Google:

…particularly those who subscribe to the traditional definition of “beta” software as not being yet ready for prime time.

Thing is, that isn’t the “traditional definition” of beta. Beta simply means that the software is undergoing an external test period of some description. It doesn’t imply anything about quality, and it never did.

If the version that was released as a beta turns out not to have any major bugs, it’s entirely possible that that same code (albeit with the beta tag removed) will subsequently be released.

I don’t know where this whole “not ready for prime time” thing came from—though I’ve seen mention of it before elsewhere—but it’s simply not true.

Just a quick note that while I won’t be at WWDC this year, Chris Suter and James Snook will both be attending. They’re both very approachable so if you spot either of them and want to talk to them about something by all means go ahead.

As I tweeted the other day, I am now the proud owner of a new three bedroom house over in Twyford (a small village near Winchester). I moved in a couple of weeks’ back now, initially on a camp bed and sleeping bag (it’s kind of exciting — I haven’t owned my own home up to now).

The developer, Hazeley Developments (tel. 01962 764500), is excellent, and in particular the project manager Simon Machola deserves some praise, both in terms of the specification and the attitude towards the development. If you have any need for new residential property, I would be quite happy to recommend their work.

Also, if you’re in the market for carpets or alternative flooring in the Southampton or Winchester area, I can thoroughly recommend Triad Carpets. I’ve been dealing with Ian and Kevin over at the Winchester branch, who have been nothing but helpful, in spite of my mucking them about a bit over the installation date for the remaining bit of carpet.

Not only did I have half their shop apart when I was originally choosing my carpets, but they went away and researched the best kind of underlay to use in my lounge (which has underfloor heating and therefore a tog limit). Plus, when installing the carpets originally, the builders found a water leak and so the carpet fitter very sensibly refrained from installing one of the bits of carpet (not something that would happen with some of the chains, I shouldn’t think) because of the amount of traffic through that area while he was there.

Anyway, it’s refreshing to find such great customer service, and they really know their stuff flooring-wise as well.

A few other things worth mentioning that I’ve bought and think are worth recommending:

• Bosch BSG8PRO1 cylinder vac.
  Expensive, but worth the money in my opinion. Even on half power, it’s still quite capable of sticking the vacuum head to the floor, and the construction oozes quality. I’m particularly fond of the swivelling castors on the base. (Yeah, I know, I sound like Kryten… they are nice though.)

  I’ve always had an upright in the past, but this Bosch has stronger suction, better construction (especially compared to the appallingly flimsy Dyson models), is smaller and lighter and comes with a good selection of attachments.

• AEG Lavamat 16850 washer dryer.
  Not cheap, but again worth the money. A-rated for wash performance, and B-rated overall which is something of a miracle for a washer dryer. It runs almost silent, and unlike many machines it only vibrates slightly on full spin. Oh, and it can actually dry clothes, if you’re using the drying programmes, which is a novelty for me as previous washer dryers I’ve used have been, well, useless.

• I.O. Shen knives.
  Sharp seems to be an understatement. Sturdy handles and nice weight as well. I had an interesting time choosing these — there are lots of good sets of knives out there at various different price points. I think the I.O. Shens are a good compromise; I wasn’t going to shell out for e.g. Tojiro knives and I don’t really like Globals for the money. Henckels look OK, and there are even some cheaper ranges from people like Meyer that look fairly good. You could also look at the various Sabatier brands (but take care — there are lots of different companies selling knives marked “Sabatier”, and they do vary in quality).

  The only thing I will say is that the magnetic knife block doesn’t work quite as well for the bread knife as for the other knives, I think because the former is quite heavy.

• Meyer Anolon Professional pans.
  These are just genius. Nothing sticks, you only need a low heat to keep things boiling, they’re easy to clean (though you can’t shove them in the dishwasher, but then as I said they are easy to clean) and oven safe too.

  I originally bought a square grill pan from this range as a present for my dad, and I knew he liked it a great deal so I thought this was an easy choice.

I’ll close by saying a big thank-you to all of the customers who have purchased copies of iDefrag and iPartition. We aren’t some big faceless company — we’re doing what we do to make a living, and it’s sales of our products that mean that I’m able to fulfil my dream of owning my own home.

The original version of iPartition took me more than a year to write, working full-time entirely unpaid, and I’m still not sure how I found the time to write iDefrag and do all the customer support for iPartition as well… since then it’s been wonderful watching the products (and the company) improve and grow and also seeing the level of support from the Mac community for our work.

For those of you waiting for me to publish the code for my icon view, I thought I’d post a brief update.

I’ve been working on adding keyboard support, which is now nearly complete. The only thing left to do before releasing the code is to add support for renaming items, just like in Finder.

After that, as promised, I’m going to enable the view for accessibility (it is currently completely devoid of accessibility code), so that we have a worked example of making this work for a complex custom view.

Earlier today, Martin Pilkington posted a blog entry criticising the criticism of the new 50% tax rate and equating “high pay” (which Martin seems to think starts at £100K or so) with greed.

I should say, in the interest of disclosure, that I do not pay myself over £150,000 (or even over £100,000), so I don’t have the inherent bias that would derive from being the victim of this new measure.

However, being a natural conservative, I do have a few things to say about Pilky’s argument.

Greed?

Taxing people 50% on their earnings over £150,000 isn’t taxing the successful. It isn’t really taxing the rich either. It is taxing the greedy.

The first thing I take issue with is that anyone earning (or paying themselves, which is really what most of Pilky’s blog talks about) over £150K is necessarily greedy. Maybe they really have earned it. Perhaps their business doesn’t need more staff, and makes more than enough money to afford to pay this much. In that case, it seems to me that it’s entirely their business whether or not they pay that much, and it’s entirely their business what they choose to do with it if they do.

The problem is with those who earn a lot of money each year, more than £150,000, and then spend it on themselves.

This is a fatuous argument; in order for it to work, the money that is spent must only benefit the individual spending it, which clearly isn’t how capitalism works. When you spend money on something, that money goes to somebody else (probably a retailer, who takes a cut, then a distributor, who takes a cut, then a manufacturer, who takes a cut, each cut being used to pay staff and also generating tax revenue for Government).

There is a similarly fatuous argument that “the problem” is with those who earn a lot of money each year and then don’t spend it. In which case, the money is probably in a bank being used to finance businesses, mortgages, car loans and the like. Again, it’s being put to good use, even if the person who earned it has decided to become part of what used to be called “the idle rich”.

The only real problem is with someone who earns lots of money, then somehow sits on it, without investing it, without depositing it at a bank, and without spending it. But who exactly would do that? Only a madman.

If you are running a successful business and taking £150,000 a year in wages or more then you’re being greedy.

Again, this is pure jealousy. I reckon it would be easy to burn through a £150K salary in the South East and end up with a fairly modest lifestyle (particularly in London, and particularly if you had a family to support and wanted to buy a house).

Telling people how to spend their money?

But what about the other £100,000? Well that could be given to charity. Think about how much good you could do with £100,000. Or how about hiring some more staff. You could hire three people for £33,000 a year.

Doesn’t this suppose that you think the charities are worthy of your money? And that they won’t (for instance) squander it or use it to pay their Chief Executive’s salary? And who’s to say that they’re more worthy of your money than the artist that made the painting you bought? Or the carpenter that made your table?

And why should businesses create unnecessary jobs? If they don’t need additional people, they shouldn’t be made to employ them no matter what the unemployment figures look like.

The taxes being taken from a business’s profits aren’t really a loss of money, but an investment in the business.

It depends what the money is spent on, and all too often the Government demonstrates that it is not only bad at spending your money, it is uniquely bad at spending it (I should probably attribute that phrase, but I forget where it comes from). Partly because the people doing the spending simply don’t care; it isn’t their money — they didn’t slave away for hours to make it, and so they don’t appreciate its value.

We hear every day about inane non-jobs (“street football co-ordinator”s and the like), and about daft regulations that mean that people are now expected to have a certificate to use a step ladder. These stupidities cost money. No business in its right mind would ever waste money doing those kinds of crazy things, but Government isn’t spending its own money; it’s spending your money, and my money. And it can even spend it before we’ve even earned it — indeed, here in the U.K., some of us actually have to pay tax on money we haven’t yet earned.

Avoidance

The silliest thing about the new tax rate is that as you increase the upper rates (particularly the upper rates) of taxation, you increase the benefit in paying expensive accountants, off-shore banks and so on to help their clients minimise their tax bills.

You also increase the motivation of businesses to offer salary sacrifice schemes and all kinds of non-cash perks for which they can minimise the taxable impact on their employees.

This is especially true when you do something as blatantly unfair as removing the personal allowance when someone’s income trips over a particular threshold, which can result in an extremely high marginal rate of taxation for people near the boundary.

I shall make a prediction here: if the 50% rate and the removal of the personal allowance goes ahead, the Government will bring in nowhere near as much extra tax from it as it is claiming now.

Fairness

One of the big problems I have with the current taxation system here in the U.K. is that it is just plain unfair.

The general public has been hoodwinked into thinking that it is only because of the “Progressive” taxation system that the rich pay more tax, and that it is right that the tax rate should increase because “after all they can afford to pay more”. Even the word “progressive” is now used mischievously by the political classes; they use it to mean a Marxist taxation arrangement where the rate progressively increases with income, whereas the general public uses it more in a sense of “modern”, “fair” and “decent”.

Yet if you sat most people down and gave them an apple each, they would agree that a fair “tax” system might be for “Government” to take the same sized bite of each apple. And now if you allowed people to give their apples to other people in exchange for (say) making them laugh, they would probably still agree that a fair system would be for “Government” to take the same sized bite from every apple, such that someone with two apples would lose two equal sized bites while someone with a single apple would only lose one.

Now, you might say, we can’t have a flat rate tax system; it isn’t fair because it means that the poorest in society have money taken from them when they can’t really afford it — everybody has basic needs and we need to deal with those first. And you’d be right.

So a proper, fair, taxation system would have a (large) personal allowance, to which everybody is entitled free of tax, followed by a flat rate thereafter. The personal allowance would be tailored such that it was roughly equal to the basic cost of living, so that the poor are effectively removed from taxation altogether. (Of course, this would still technically be a progressive taxation system, albeit a much less complicated one.)

I think by adopting a system like this, and (ideally) scrapping all other taxes, allowances and so on, the tax system would be easier to understand, easier to police, more visibly fair and less likely to be subject to widespread avoidance. And the rich would still contribute more of their income than the poor; in fact, it would be harder for them to avoid doing so.

Why doesn’t the House just buy the St. Ermin’s Hotel, then they can stay there if they need? IIRC it has a passage through to the Palace of Westminster (for those that don’t know, that’s the name of the building that houses Parliament), and it even used to have a bell in the lobby that rings when there’s a vote in the House, so that MPs can make their way through to Parliament to vote.

Then there wouldn’t be any need for a second home allowance, or any kind of overnight allowance for that matter either.

Last week, before going to NSConference, we were notified by American Express that some of the transactions that had gone through our site were being queried by their customer.

Looking at them in more detail, it became apparent that this was almost certainly (another) case of card fraud. In the past, we’ve largely put up with fraud as a cost of doing business; it usually surprises people to know that we actually lose money over it, because they mistakenly think that it will be the banks that lose the money — but that usually isn’t the case where downloadable items are concerned, and we often end up paying an additional “chargeback fee” as well.

Anyway, we recently decided that we’d report all card fraud to the police, and in this particular case for reasons I’m not going to go into here we have reason to believe that this particular fraud wasn’t just a one-off and that this fraudster is probably hurting a lot of other people too.

The British Police, somewhat to my surprise (we’re always hearing bad things about them over here, justified or otherwise), did offer to take a look at it. Unfortunately, the fraudster is in France, and the French Police have apparently refused to deal with it because it’s too small an amount of money.

The annoying part here is that it won’t be a small amount in total. Other people will be being defrauded by this guy, and he’s also obviously got access to stolen credit card details as well. It’s very unlikely, though, that any individual purchase will be large enough to convince the French Police that they need to investigate, and since fraud is individually reported by vendors (and not centrally by card issuers or card processors) it’s very unlikely that they’ll ever bother to look into it on the basis of reports from overseas. Effectively they’ve handed this guy a license to defraud anyone outside France, as long as individually it isn’t for much money.

I don’t suppose that the French are unusual in this kind of behaviour either. My guess is that nobody will investigate foreign reports of crime within their own country unless the amount is “large enough”.

Given that fact, it’s pretty obvious why people are committing card fraud every day on the Internet, and even more obvious why they’re getting away with it.

At NSConference, I promised a couple of people that I’d write up some of the work I’ve done on accessibility for our products, after they (and I) noted that it can be tricky to get the implementation right in a full custom view. iPartition’s pie chart view was a case in point; I remember spending literally hours trying to get the Voice Over cursor to do the right thing.

Anyway, I also decided that I should publish a few bits of code that we’ve been sitting on here, including a rather nifty Finder-esque icon view. Here’s a teaser screenshot from my test app:

(Yes, it really can cope with different icon sizes in the same view, if that’s what you want.)

While tidying the icon view code up yesterday, it occurred to me that it would make a good accessibility example; presently it doesn’t have accessibility support (in fact, right now it’s lacking a lot of keyboard support, which I’m going to add before publishing it). So what I’m going to do is finish adding basic keyboard support, since everyone knows how to do that already, and then I’m going to write an article showing exactly how to add the necessary code to make it accessible.