What a relief to get to Friday, and young Henry, who as the saying goes, wears his learning heavily.
Whereas the other reptiles can be a rough, coarse, crude and rowdy lot, our hole in the bucket man makes the pond eternally grateful for having studied Latin ...even now the pond is slowly making its way through Ryszard Kapuściński's Travels with Herodotus with the hope of discovering a bon mot or three it might drop into the conversation with this paragon of the 'leets.
But with all that preparation, the pond wasn't prepared at all for our Henry's stunning decision to go through an upgrade to 1.01 and discuss the travails of the NBN ...
It's a "both sides of politics", with a wretched illustration at the top? And no mention of all those many years of News Corp trying to degut it to protect their franchise, and Malware successfully carrying out the mission, such that to the pond's great embarrassment, some of the rellies in a remote location have recently turned to Elon Musk, and reported a great improvement?
It's not the pond's business to promote that ratbag, or Starlink, but it's come to a pretty pass when a ratbag manages to do something better than Malware ... and the News Corp mob.
Even now the pond still seethes at the total cock-up inspired by Chairman Rupert but must hold its tongue, because the learned hole in the bucket man, heavy in his larnin' might drop another 'leet bit of wisdom ...
Oh wait, of course, it's an of course, to be followed in due course by a couple of billy goat butts ...
Still no word of the role that mendacious Malware and his mob played in fucking the entire enterprise? Still no mention of the cost of replacing the complete mess with fibre to the home? Still no mention of his multi modal mendacity?
The pond kids not ... if you google the beast you can get Malware on 23rd October 2017
quoted as saying ...
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that, in hindsight, the National Broadband Network project was a mistake and blamed the former Labor government for setting up a new government company to deliver the mammoth infrastructure project.
And Mr Turnbull, who was previously the Communications Minister in the Abbott government, admitted the giant project might never make back the money invested by taxpayers.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's effort to entrench his own narrative of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) into Australia's political history is truly fascinating.
"There is no country, comparable developed country, which has as ubiquitous availability of high-speed broadband as Australia," Turnbull told the StartCon conference in Sydney last Friday.
Freelancer founder Matt Barrie had just reminded the audience of the NBN's cost and performance.
"Despite spending AU$50 billion in Australia's largest infrastructure project ever, today we're ranked 62nd for global broadband speed, 40% slower than the global average," Barrie said.
Turnbull interrupted. "Those those statistics are absolutely BS, Matt. Absolute BS," he said.
Such a bullshit artist, with the foolish fop speaking out of both sides of his mouth ... and the pond began to resent the hole in the bucket man for dragging the pond back to the days when HFC was deemed state of the art by Malware's mob, or at least she'll be right, with the odd stocking and bit of barbed wire ...
But what do you know, with a "whether" which is as good as a billy goat's butt, our Henry is all in for Malware ...
Um, it fucked the entire enterprise, and now the pond's relatives are actually contributing coin to the Musk man so that he might buy Twitter and foist the mango Mussolini back on the world ... there must be an irony in there somewhere ...
The pond was beginning to get enraged, so it was handy that there was just one billy goat butt to go ...
Um, what the pond hears is that Herodotus, Malware and the coalition have much in common ...Of all the hole in the bucket man''s miseries the bitterest is this: to pretend to know so much and to have control over nothing.
And now before proceeding, the pond would like to honour the attempt by the meretricious Merritt to make the pond ...
A splendid bit of fear mongering, in keeping with the reptile blather this past week, showing they'll stop at nothing to get rid of these difficult, pesky, uppity blacks and their wretched desire for a voice ...
If the bromancer and Dame Slap hadn't already offered their own patented form of fear and loathing, the pond might have been tempted. But "the High Court is gunna get ya" simply wasn't competitive enough ...
You see, whenever the pond hears the siren song of "woke agenda", the pond realises a bubble-headed booby is hovering in the air, and must be given space to land ...
Now some might say this is just the usual tranny bashing and bashing of minorities beloved of the reptiles ... but it's important to note how a bubble-headed booby can manage to conflate and confuse "woke capitalism" with the "woke agenda" ... before turning to celebrate the mutton Dutton ... and truly there's a lot to celebrate ...
Sorry, the pond is in danger of being triggered, and so needs the odd cartoon to make it to the end ...
You see, there's the "woke agenda" as a match made in heaven. But what is the "woke agenda"?
"Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations... oh and only indulge in tranny bashing once in a blue moon, better yet never, and recognise that the Uluru statement came from the heart and don't be such a bunch of asinine fuckwits ..."
Sorry, sorry, the pond is being triggered a lot this day, and it usually happens when maroons blather on about woke agendas, and all the pond can come up with is idle abuse, or the odd relieving cartoon .
Moir almost got it right. Oh the tragedy of Barners, the mourning in Tamworth, the endless suffering, but that portrait will surely linger in the mind ...
That's not to downplay that portrait of the beefy boofhead, distilled essence of prime Angus, but the pond is collecting versions of the mutton Dutton ...
And so to a final gobbet, which set the pond to thinking and wishing ... if only the pond had the sophistication of a bigot of the bubble-headed booby kind ...
Oh just fuck off ... the coalition government had many chances to show it cared for proper wages, and what it showed the workforce instead was a proper stiffy, and call the pond woke if you like, but it hates all that stiffing ... and has no time for bigotry dressed up in the finery of giving a flying fuck about the workers ...
That game was tried in Warringah and all the pond got for it was some teal-coloured curtains.
Meanwhile, the pond should not that the reptiles remain in.a panic about an issue that suddenly emerged just a week ago, and now requires the urgent attention of the newly installed federal government, which must fix everything in a week, because the catastrophe only came about last week ...
Who in reptile la la land could have possibly known that winter was just around the corner? Apparently it's all the new government's entire fault ...
The pond only mentioned that so that the Rowe of the day might be enjoyed all the more ...
It is tedious, but necessary, when we are presented with the Henry’s opinions on cost of electronic infrastructure, to go to the 2015 Cambridge Economic History of Australia, and the contribution from Henry Ergas and Jonathan Pincus titled ‘Infrastructure and Colonial Socialism’; which, happily, was much more about infrastructure than whatever ‘colonial socialism’ might have been. The authors are obscure on that second point.
ReplyDeleteThe authors refer to the benefits that came with the telegraph, then the telephone, and note, with approval, that through the 1920s, development of both systems required 10% of public capital spending.
They do refer to retrospective studies of assorted infrastructure - not that there are many - but, for example, sniffily dismiss Bruce Davidson’s assessment that rates of return on the New South Wales railways between 1852 and 1920 was in the range 13-15%.
Ergas and Pincus -
“We note, however, that a favourable result from such a retrospective calculation does not mean that the decisions were justified prospectively.”
Gee, guys - welcome to the world of investment. Can we look forward to your definitive work on cryptocurruncies?
When the Ergas and Pincus paper was prepared, our Henry had already published a book on how the natural monopoly of telecommunications was becoming degraded because of attempts to convert it into a competitive market with extra players.
Wrong number : resolving Australia's telecommunications impasse / Henry Ergas. Published 2008
the blurb says that, amongst the many parts of the ‘impasse’ was that the new regime ‘privileged rent-seeking over genuine competition.’
Again - welcome, guys, to the world of investment. You have many, many segments of the economy where you can hunt out evidence to demonstrate a primary commitment to competition over rent-seeking. Try not to torture the data too viciously.
And Henry’s tome is not offered as evidence of anything in the Ergas and Pincus chapter of the Cambridge.
But to his offering today. If it was good enough for governments to commit 10% of public capital spending on 1920s communications technology - then, drawing on the most recent Auditor General numbers I could find for current Commonwealth spending (4 years old) - it would be consistent for the NBN to draw on $50 billion a year, to bring us a service that compared with international standards for versatility and efficiency.
Thanks for the quantifications on Australia's telegraph and phones and the NSW railways, Chad. Always nice to have the actual numbers.
DeleteThe Holely Hentry: "But while the broad approach is incontentious, it imposes massive risks on taxpayers..." Just totally earth-shattering "massive risks" no less. Why, Australia - the world's 13th largest economy by IMF based nominal GDP (and only just behind South Korea), though only 18th by PPP GDP - could end up bankrupt just like Sri Lanka (73rd by nominal, and 57th by PPP GDP). Then we'd all be out of a job and the Murdoch media would be bust. Holely H gives us a total of $20bn (rewiring) + $15bn (social housing) + $15bn (revitalise manufacturing) = $50bn spread over several years. Yep, losing all that in a nation of about $1.75 trillion (nominal) GDP per year; definitely absolutely "massive". We'd all be rooned !
ReplyDelete"some of the relies in a remote location have recently turned to Elon Musk" Just like the Ukraine soldiers, DP
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-starlink-satellites-helping-ukraine-fight-soldier-2022-4
" because the learned hole in the bucket man, heavy in his larnin' might drop another 'leet bit of wisdom ..." Or indeed a whole gallimaufry of it, perhaps, because he has so very much to share. So when the ultimately wise Holely says "the network's balance sheet could be shorn of at least $25bn in the short run and of $50bn over the period to 2040." then $50bn/18 years = $2.77bn per year. Wau, at that rate one year's worth of $1.75trillion national GDP would only last for about 631 years or so.
So, Henry blusters that: "Should that occur, taxpayers, not consumers, will have funded two-thirds if a project that, we were assured, would find itself." Ok, Malware and mob not withstanding, does Henry have any idea whatsoever how most of Australia's infrastructure got made ? You know, telegraphs and mail services and railways and roads and airports and universities and hospitals and the like ? And just how much of them were paid by 'taxpayers' ? No, I didn't think so.
Bit, ooh, how terrible: "NBN's costs per gigabyte carried are more than twice those of Chorus, its New Zealand equivalent, which also boasts lower average prices, higher average speeds and greater network utilisation." And has anybody told Henry how small and compact NZ is ? How the biggest city (Auckland) has 1.657 million (about 34 %) of New Zealand's population of 4.896 million and that New Zealand hasn't got a thin but significant population spread out over 7.6 million sq km. And that most of all, NZ never had Abbott and Turnbull in its federal government. But hey, the Holely H wouldn't know anything at all about not comparing incomparable things as though such comparisons were meaningful.
Finally: "the government should, at a minimum, task the Productivity Commission with examining its three funds..." Oh no it shouldn't, it should simply disband the Productivity Commission and thus get rid of just one more of Peter Costello's useless and pointless pseudo-neoliberal bureaucracies.
I think maybe the reptiles are getting a wee tad distributed: now they must attack a Labor government that hasn't done anything yet (except turn around the 'Pacific problem' very promptly) and this wiffle piffle is the very best that Holely Henry can come up with. Desperate times indeed.
A good point RE the Productivity Commission, GB. From its earliest days, it quickly developed a reputation among the wider bureaucracy as a useful asylum for barking-mad flat-earth economists, segregating them from the mainstream of the public service. Over the last couple of decades, however, the simple fact of the PC’s continued existence has allowed it to develop a status that it simply does not deserve. Best to either abolish the organisation or impose a recruitment freeze and set it some long-term project (eg, how to effectively privatise the atmosphere) that will keep its denizens happily occupied until the last one retires.
DeleteAnony - I had not expected the recent reactionary government to set the productivity commission to useful work, but I am disappointed to read that it did not try to pick itself up by the bootstraps. I like your choice of final long-term project, and would be pleased to think I am unlikely to be standing upright when its interim discussion paper emerges on that- round about 2050.
DeleteThe meretricious Merritt: "The ultimate fate of the new institution - like all other parts of the Constitution - would become the responsibility of the seven High Court judges, not parliament." Just simple-minded bullshit as usual. The parliament which called a referendum to set up the 'Voice' can call a referendum to modify it's existence and even to kill it.
ReplyDeleteBut then, that wouldn't give the reptiles the opportunity to both complain about "importing race into the Constitution" and to slag off "activist judges." Slappy must be beaming with delight.
"Try and be nice" ... "try and live together" Aaaarggghhh !
ReplyDelete