Saturday, September 19, 2009

Crocodile tears

Will there be any tears shed at the enforced separation of Telstra?

Classical economic theory argues that a monopoly will deliver poorer service at a higher price than a company facing true competition, and guess what: in most peoples' eyes, this is exactly what the Howard Government delivered in the privatised monopoly telecommunications monster that is Telstra. Poor product offerings at uncompetitive prices, unimaginable arrogance and appalling service, only exacerbated because Telstra was in the unique position of monopoly supplier and dominant retail competitor.

And now that the Labor Government is finally paying Telstra back - for its years of appallingly poor corporate behaviour - I cannot imagine there are too many Australian's [apart from a bleating Opposition] who will shed any tears at all.

A

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Duplicitous Thatcher

The British are a duplicitous lot at the best of times. But the staggering admission last week that the British Prime Minister of the time [Margaret Thatcher] had requested the Soviets to prevent the unification of Germany - apart from revealing how dishonestly her Government behaved in this matter - shows such an ignorance of late 20th Century geopolitical realities as to almost beggar belief.

While the official government position stated otherwise, it has now been revealed that Thatcher urged Soviet Leader Gorbachov to use Soviet power not to allow East and West Germany to re-unite in mid-1989, even though Britain was supposedly a close ally of [West] Germany.

Apart from being totally duplitious, this position on the part of the British PM displayed a frighteningly myopic degree of paranoia - that the totally destroyed [and admittedly rebuilt] Germany was somehow more dangerous than a discredited totalitarian Soviet empire that caused untold suffering on its own people [it is estimated that 12 million people were killed or imprisoned under Stalin's abysmal rule] as well as terrible pain on its vassal nations of Eastern Europe.

A

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