John Linton
Has Whine Managed To Get "The Inflation Genie Back In The Bottle" yet? I suppose there have been less competent federal treasurers than Whine Swan (though it's hard to imagine there has ever been a less educationally and experientially qualified one) but his ridiculously stupid and profoundly wrong "inflation genie" statement in his first budget will define how totally inadequate he is to hold any job in finance at all - let alone his current position. I was reminded of how totally stupid Whine actually is when I read this earlier this morning:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6138997.ece
which underlines just how far the major world's economies are, and were, from needing to "get the inflation genie back in the bottle" less than twelve months ago and how hopelessly inept and totally out of their depth the Labor party is to 'manage the economy'. My comments yesterday were very much along the same lines as I pointed out that virtually every 'component' of providing end user communications services in Australia had fallen over the past twelve months (except for pricing from Telstra Wholesale) and that it is a common trend in hard financial times for this to happen.
The coming budget will have to deal with the Whitlamesque/Weimar Republicesque/Krudd borrowing splurges that shower hundred dollar notes to anyone who can spend them and by now treasury would have told him (assuming they didn't in the first place) that not only did his childish grandstanding splurges not create a single job but that the majority of the money disappeared overseas (and I'm not counting the money he actually sent directly overseas to all those Kiwis and Brits etc who received it courtesy of once having a backpacking holiday here 30 years ago). Apart from the fact that Krudd has as much understanding of economics as Whitlam did (and has produced the same result as Whitlam in half the time) he has already run out of money to spend and will now begin to have to deal with his grotesque addiction to his personal cargo cult attitude to federal financing.
For those people with even less knowledge of economics and finance than me (if there are such people - other than Krudd and Whine) let me give you the benefit of my experience of recessions (ones that we didn't have to have). Firstly there's the denial (we've passed that phase as of Monday after 7 months of continual ridiculously bare faced lying by Krudd and Whine), then the denial is immediately replaced, as if someone turned a switch, with the wild exaggerations of how bad everything is going to be (we are now in that phase) then there's the reality that for 1 - 3 years everything gets very tough for all the people who have the least abilities (financial mainly but societally too) to deal with the problems. In simple terms this means that having pissed all of the country's readily available resources away in mindless and totally useless 'panem et circenses' handouts to try and ensure re-election the (Labor) government of the day will borrow money at very high interest rates to pay for essential services needed to actually 'run the country'. There won't be enough money to do this so they will cut the services and raise taxes.
Anyone want to bet against that?...anyone?....anyone?
Exetel, a tiny, vaguely commercial enterprise (whose directors and owners would commit suicide before they would vote for people like Krudd and Whine and the screech owl) can obviously do nothing to assist the mess created by the muppets currently posing as a Federal Government.....though I suppose we could send Whine a toothbrush, some tooth whitener and the name of a good orthodontist as his parents obviously had no regard for dentistry during his childhood phases and perhaps some Ashley and Martin vouchers for Krudd - even some further elocution lessons for the screech owl to attempt to find those missing syllables and reduce her upper register shrieking delivery down to a more comprehensible level? On second thoughts that might help those three individuals (who are already full time helping themselves) but it wouldn't do much for the people who really need some consideration.
What we, possibly, could do as our totally irrelevantly tiny contribution to the likely difficult times ahead is to, as several of our customers have suggested lately, offer some broadband plans for 'pensioners'. Now, its clearly my fault but I'm not sure I know what people define as 'pensioner' these days. I know the 'old definition' was people who had reached retirement age and received a government pension in gratitude for their contributions to the country's economy by working the whole of their lives to make it possible for wastes of space like Krudd to throw all their tax money away so he can go on living overseas making a goose of himself. But a cursory 'straw poll' seems to indicate that you can receive a 'pension' at the age of 14 now (unmarried mother support) and the scope widens from there.
Nonetheless - and without knowing how we might 'qualify' the offer, it seems that Exetel should make its contribution to assisting those people less able to assist themselves by providing broadband plans at our cost rather than try and make even the minimal profit we currently attempt. I would have thought our "PAYU" plans pretty much fitted that category but apparently not.
So by the end of this coming weekend we will put in place some cost price plans for pensioners. We will try our best to make them truly affordable but Telstra's ADSL1 wholesale pricing makes that extremely difficult and ADSL2 is not available in almost all regional and rural areas so it's a challenge. Any ideas will be very welcome.
(I got up even earlier than usual this morning to watch the Liverpool v Arsenal game - great game - strange result - I wonder if anyone has ever scored four goals in a game their team didn't win? Oh well.)