John Linton ........as stated by Malcolm Fraser when making some long ago, long forgotten budget cut or other....but does it have to be quite as hard as it is at the moment?
I am taking little/no notice of the "election coverage" by not reading any section of the SMH or FR that refers to that sad and sorry farrago of lies and self importance or switching radio stations in the car when some mis-guided person starts to mention any aspect of it. However, I am cheered to hear third/fourth/fifth hand that there is a chance that some of the idiots who voted Kevin Rudd in to a position where he single handed/via massive stupidity destroyed the Australian communications industry will not repeat their mistake of getting on for three years ago and there is some slim chance that the screech owl will not follow Krudd as the most incompetent prime minister that Australia has ever had imposed on it by an illiterate electorate that rivals the 200 AD 'pane et circenses' Roman mobs for knowledge of the character, integrity and capability of the people they are voting for - and apply the same 'reasoning'.
So, my vote, like so many other people's, come August 21st will be meaningless as it will be cast in an electorate which has only returned a candidate from the same party since the electorate was created. The party that will provide the next government will, largely, be determined by people who have only been in Australia for less than ten years, are not able to communicate in the Australian language very well and have absolutely no knowledge of any real aspects of how Australia works......and some people have been known to suggest that Australia is a democracy?
Perhaps it's just Exetel's ways of doing business with it's customers and suppliers and even its employees but I find it progressively more difficult to understand things that I am told or things that I read that allegedly express other people in the industry's points of view on subjects and events that I was almost certain I understood quite well or at least not so completely incorrectly as the views other people express indicate must be the case. It is reaching the point where I am seriously thinking of simply accepting that my views (and much more seriously the decisions I make based on those views) are nowhere close to being accurate and therefore I must stop making decisions for the company I have a major role in operating.
For instance:
1) I appear to be in a tiny majority of people who thinks a government built 'NBN2' is not only ideologically insane but that it will destroy the Australian communications industry. I also seem to be the only person who remembers that it was a political stunt by Krudd to try and cover up the fiasco of the 'NBN1'.
2) It seems that my understanding of a retail/wholesale 'go to market' structure is that prices to wholesale customers are lower (by the cost of sale, delivery and ongoing support) than they are to retail customers is completely wrong and it is actually the other way round.I just can't understand how a supplier who sells via its own retail processes seems to think it can sell to a wholesale customer at prices higher than they sell for retail.
3) I was under the impression that people who are over five years old who buy products/services understand that there is a cost of producing them and maintaining them that means that they can't be "free" and that whenever the word "free" is used in promoting a product or service it's a lie. But not in Australian communications where a significant proportion of customers think that the cost 0f producing mobile phone hand sets or ADSL routers etc is zero and that's what they should pay for them.
I could go on but I've either made my point or you, too, fall in to that 'other' category. So it would seem that the very significant changes that have been happening in the Australian communications marketplace that coincided with the election of the previous (or is that current?) Labor government will continue to their Apocalyptic conclusion with the election of the screech owl and Exetel's residential business will be swept away by those events over the not too distant future. Too pessimistic? Maybe that is the case but I have found little to persuade me otherwise and as I have most of our family's financial assets accumulated over a working life time invested in what I believe in, I am in a much better position than most to express opinions on subjects I have long experience with and a very, very significant financial investment in - unlike the vast majority of "commentators".
The election of a future government is far too serious an issue to be put in the hands of the people it is currently in.
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