John Linton We left Singapore on a 9 am flight and arrived at Heathrow at a little after 3 pm (UK time). After an epic taxi around what seemed to be the entire perimeter of all five terminals we were eventually ejected into one of the oldest of Heathrow's terminals that was so scruffy it made Sydney's airport look almost luxurious. However customs/immigration was a breeze and our bags were prompt so no complaints. We took a taxi to our hotel which was the rebuilt St Pancras railway station (because we are getting a Eurostar to France from the operating St Pancras station tomorrow) and I couldn't face the London tube after a 16 hour journey time. I must thank our taxi driver for introducing us to new parts of London that I wouldn't have thought were a part of any of the obvious routes From Heathrow to our destination but that was my own fault for not paying attention to what was going on.
The hotel is quite spectacular using the old Victorian building shell with the original high vaulted ceilings and very clever architects. The added on rooms are OK and for one night more than adequate. We met up with our youngest daughter and her boyfriend for drinks and the worst meal I can remember having in the hotel's bar/casual dining as, not unnaturally, their fining restaurant was fully booked being a Friday night. However it was nice to see Catherine again and she was in very high spirits and she and Annette managed to fill every second with their 'information exchanges' that the males at the table were not required to utter more than a few words during the time it took to have a couple of drinks and push the execrable food around the plate. The bar we 'ate' in had doors that led directly on to the train station platforms and the Eurostar platforms are less than a five minute walk from the hotel's check out...so we can sleep in before taking the train to Paris for a few days.
I was amused by this:
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/09/02/tech-management-bloodbath-hits-internode/
which I read just before starting this blog entry. Not because I wish anything bad for the people who try to operate in this terrible industry over the past few years bt because of the many direct contradictions that the article tries to "spin". The quote from the Internode spokesperson that began the article "these difficult times" means very simply that Internode is now firing the 'fat' within its personnel following the increase to its prices some weeks ago. The people named in the article didn't "want to try something different after working for Internode for so many years" they simply were an expendable overhead in a company that is facing falling revenues and far too many overheads - including personnel who make no contributions. Internode won't "suddenly find" that they have four over priced/under contributing senior managers they will extend this "rationalisation" across every 'level' of their operations.
I have stated many times over the past few years that the residential ADSL business was just getting tougher and tougher and there was no room for 'fat' in any participant's operations. Apparently Internode is finding the same situation as every provider of residential services has had to recognise and is doing what they almost certainly knew should be done some time ago.
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