John Linton ....sunrise and sundown......one of Harry Chapin's less memorable songs from the day.
I noticed when Annette and I went out for a quiet lunch yesterday that there was a very high tide - I assume a Spring tide which we have seen over the years but it is yet another reminder that a year has elapsed since we last remarked on it. Much of business (perhaps according to Harry - much of life) consists of ebbs and flows with businesses reaching peaks from which they fall away over various time frames.There are a few exceptions over time but they are, obviously, the exceptions with the overwhelming majority of commercial enterprises fading often before they have bloomed to use yet another, not very accurate, metaphor.
One of the things I often remark on when I take a holiday in the UK are the number of 'shops' you come across that are still doing the same things they did centuries ago and surprisingly often it at least appears that the same 'family' continues to operate the business. The famous examples are Hatchards or Fortnum and Masons in London or even Crocket and Jones where I got my first 'boarding school' shoes from - they have been around for 200 plus years. When we were village hopping around the Cotswolds we lost track of the number of premises that had "Since 1635" type dates on their lintels and, of course, the number of inns and churches that dated back to the 1200s were too numerous to begin to keep track of. Perhaps the provision of spiritual inspiration, hunger sating and thirst quenching services contains the essence of longevity based on basic human needs and, in the case of villages, limited or no competition and that explains why there is so little 'turnover' over the centuries.
When I read the latest ABS figures I was struck by the apparent contrast (perhaps because it had made such a recent impression) between what I had been experiencing on holdays and what I live my Australian business live within. With the sole exception of Telstra/Telecom/GPO no other organisation has been even vaguely associated with providing telecommunications services for more than the proverbial five minutes. While that is not surprising (how could it be otherwise?) it does mean that (with the possible exception of Optus and Vodafone) none of the current purveyors of communications services in Australia has any 'stake' or even any real reason to be in the communications businesses....and certainly no reason to stay in them. I am not sure it matters in the 21st century CE (I wonder if it is now offensive to various people in Australia to date everything from a religious event that they are not part of?) about corporate longevity but I can't help wondering about it being a tiny part of it.
In the event that Labor does get to recreate the original GPO in Australia what will really happen? Does anyone know? Does anyone actually remember what Australian communications was like (and cost) before the Optus license was granted? Does anyone relate to the way a bunch of venal political party hacks have run the Australian military for their personal enrichment since Federation being a mirror for the latest bulging bribery NBN2 trough? Does anyone care?
Apparently not.
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