Magic Statistics

Rev Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, attacks influential secularists in a wide-ranging interview reported in today’s Daily Mail.  Rejecting the view that religion is a purely private matter, he says the church must speak louder in defence of the beliefs held by the great majority of Britons.

He told me the Church of England 'has been too timid.'

He called for a re-assertion of Victorian values, a return to the family, and an end to the tyranny of Christmas consumerism. He is sorrowful about the rejection of Britain's Christian heritage.

'When I was in Uganda, everything that was British was the best. If you went to a shop to buy a ruler, you looked for one that said Made in Britain. But now this country disbelieves in itself in an amazing way.

It almost dislikes its own culture, it doesn't realise that the arts, music, buildings have grown out of a strong Christian tradition. John Betjeman would be shocked that the nation is not interested in helping preserve these buildings.'

Dr Sentamu criticises the BBC for slamming Christians while treating Muslims with kid gloves.

'We get more knocks, they can do to us what they dare not do to the Muslims. We are fair game, because they can get away with it. We don't go down there and say we are going to bomb your place. It is not within our nature.'

He implores parents to spend more time with their children instead of handing them expensive playthings and using TV as a babysitter.

'Parents should spend more time talking to children because behaviour is learned in the home. It is no good blaming schools.'
. . .
'Victorian values are always being berated but at least parents back then put children and their education first. I look now and see these latchkey kids, some as young as seven.' 'We hear too much of people's rights. At the heart of it there are responsibilities. To do that which I ought.'

Dr Sentamu, the sixth of 13 children, was raised in a poor Ugandan village where no child had toys.  After becoming a judge, he fled to England to escape persecution from Idi Amin.  He and his wife raised two children of their own, as well as two foster children.

Read the whole thing.

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• British moral principles derive from Christianity
• Multiculturalism has betrayed the English

How the mighty have fallen!  Microsoft, once the respected world leader in computer software, has been reduced to paying shakedowns to music industry giant Universal Music Group (UMG).  That's how desperate Microsoft is to sell its would-be iPod competitor, the Zune digital music player.

In a rare move, Microsoft said yesterday that it had agreed to pay a percentage of the sales of its new portable media player to the Universal Music Group.

Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi, will receive a royalty on the Zune player in exchange for licensing its recordings for Microsoft's new digital music service, the companies said.

Universal, which releases recordings from acts like U2 and Jay-Z, said it would pay half of what it receives on the device to its artists. The company is expected to receive more than $1 for each $250 device, according to executives who were briefed on the pact.

UMG will get a cut from Microsoft, not just for downloaded songs, but also for every Zune Microsoft sells.  Apple, by contrast, pays royalties for songs downloaded through its iTunes Music Store, but nothing on iPod sales.

Has Microsoft lost its mind?  Why would it agree to a deal so obviously less profitable than that of the competitor it seeks to dethrone as king of digital music?

UMG had been holding off on licensing music to Microsoft, which would have threatened Zune plans to take down iPod and Apple. Classic Mafia shakedown: pay us or else. The argument being made is that people are not buying enough via digital downloads, so the music industry should get a piece of the hardware action.

The music companies are still operating on the assumption that its own customers are thieves, and now one of them has bullied Microsoft into co-operating with a last-millennium business model.  Steve Jobs stood up to that nonsense and got a sensible deal.  Bill Gates didn't: He caved to a demand that implicitly stigmatises his customers.

Technology blogger Om Malik figures that, if Apple had paid $1 per iPod sold over the past two years, the amount would have been equivalent to selling one more song per device.

If the music industry cannot sell one additional song to consumers (and has to blackmail for more money) then, you as a business, have lost grip over your core competency.

The music industry used to make money by selling music.  Now, however, they've embarked on a new strategy: make money by extorting music device manufacturers.  Isn’t that the Mafia’s business model?

h/t: Geekwatch by Matthew Ingram

Previous related post: Microsoft's iPod competitor is a joke