Broadband Tax

According to MCV, the UK’s new “Communication Minister” is set to back – at least partially- plans to levy a “broadband tax” on every broadband subscriber in the UK.

So why would the government want to make UK broadband, already ridiculously priced, more expensive? So it can give your money to rich music, film and game publishers. Yup, they want to take money off you for the service which is substandard and overpriced already and give it to wealthy companies who spuriously claim that piracy is affecting their business.

So let’s take a moment to address that claim, at least for game publishers: Piracy, they claim, is forcing them to inflate their prices. In spite of PSP games generally getting cheaper, largely due to the piracy problem and PC games being on average about 25-33% cheaper because otherwise people would just steal them. Wii games (which can be pirated) and 360 games (which can also be pirated) are usually slightly cheaper than PS3 games (which still resist the advances of the pirating scumbags). So all evidence suggests that piracy causes a decrease in prices.

So that’s game publishers taken to pieces, I’ll leave the movie and music industries to people who are a little more qualified to comment on them but rest assured that it’s a similar story. And yet the government who were elected into power to represent your interests, to work for you, want to give your money to them. Can you afford to pay more tax?

Why this government seems to consistantly feel the need to take tax-payers money and give it to businesses which fail to evolve and adapt to market conditions is beyond me. I just hope they all live a lonely life and die painfully with nobody to care about them.