John Linton
....(apologies to Douglas Adams)....Halibut, Turbot, Monkfish, Cod, Herring (smoked and pickled), Haddock (fresh and smoked), Salmon (fresh and smoked, Whitebait, Sardines, Scallops (King, Queen and 'Emperor' sized), Prawns, Shrimp, Dover Sole, Squid, John Dory, Crab (several types), Lobster, Langoustine and several types of oysters.....the seafood in the UK is mind blowingly good and, with two exceptions, I had fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner.....but it's getting towards the time to get out to the airport and leave it all behind.
It's been a great 18 days.
I read that Starbucks was closing 75% of their 'stores' in Australia as I try and catch up on the Australian 'news'. Personally I think Starbucks makes execrable coffee aimed at the US market where three kgs of sugar per 'food portion' appears to be the norm for their fast food industry and, apart from that, my experience of American coffee over 35+ years is that it's undrinkable no matter who prepares it. At first I thought this was a big plus for Australian taste buds rejecting the cr** Starbucks purvey but deeper in to the article it seemed to imply that Starbucks revenue had fallen by 50% worldwide over the past two years.
So perhaps it isn't an Australian taste bud rejection but more of a business model failure exacerbated by tougher economic times where the office drones have stopped lashing out their own $A3.50 for their watery/creamy/sugary/coffeeless concoction and settled for their free coffee machine offering at their offices as the higher interest rates, higher petrol prices and higher prices generally bite into their 'disposable incomes'.
The UK papers are full of bad financial news with new car sales at their lowest point in eight years and house prices recording their biggest monthly fall in 30 years not to mention the jacking up of electricity and gas prices by up to 35% which saturates TV news and events programs. I see from the US press that similar stories dominate their financial pages together with the superannuation fund burn outs across the financial world - including Australia.
I am no economist and have less than no knowledge about economic theories and hard and soft landings and whether we are in a recession or not in a recession. What I do seem to see is a swathe of bad news that has been going on for 8 plus months and very solid evidence that food and petrol prices are much higher and house prices are falling in Australia and there are increasing mortgage defaults and personal and corporate bankruptcies.
I will 'get back up to date' on things Australian over the next few days before returning to Sydney mid next week but it appears to me that there will need to be a change in broadband pricing to meet the less 'affluent' spending budgets of a large number of people. I could, of course, be wrong - I often am - but perhaps the current 'sweet spots' for pricing broad band services will have to be reduced in line with the reduction in 'spending' power that exists in Australia and is likely to exist over the coming 12 months.
Right now I wouldn't know how to put such concepts in to place but I get the feeling that it will be necessary to address the new broadband users who will move from dial up for the first time over the coming 12 - 18 months.
I am amazed at the number of broadband offerings in the UK that are advertised as “FREE” in the large print in the press ads and in the words on the screen in the TV ads. I seem to remember that DODO had some sort of ad promising “FREE” broad band but I don’t actually remember how it was actually delivered.
I think some way of offering ‘free’ broad band will be the way to go to attract brand new users away from dial up and the clutches of the big advertising broad band companies. I just wonder how this can be ethically done and practically delivered but I have a glimmer of an idea or two. With the cost of, say, an ADSL2 service with zero downloads being around $16.00 you have to find some other service to 'bury' that $16.00 in to make the "FREE" broadband sound reasonably "honest' - not something that comes easily to me. However I have two very long flights to mull it over.
Time to leave the land of great seafood and fly onwards to the land of great spices and very low cost gem stones.