Fozz. Public schools and public health both have vast budgets thrown at them. Have you every wondered why it is that they just cannot deliver and is the problem due in some ways to an attitude of “expectation” on behalf of the staff rather than an attitude of “customer service and performance”.

Maybe the problem with public services is, they lack the necessity to perform and just bleat about how tough it is, whilst their private peers are dealing with the realities of working in an environment where they have to perform to stay in business?

Telecom – forgive me, I thought Telstra, even when under the auspice of the PMG was a commercial service created to supply a “fee for use” telephone service.
Building a telephone company was never about merely employing people, otherwise we could just add a few more thousand staff to sit around, slug the customer a few bucks more a week, let them suffer dial up internet, not need to invest in broadband.

Well everything privatized, that means when these commercial companies need to extend their borrowing to finance commercially viable expansion, they can go directly to the share market and experience the due diligence and competitive nature of expert risk assessment, rather than fudging a few memos through a couple of bored public servants who simply slug the tax payer for millions of dollars to have funds made available from the public purse.

I have expressed my view on water, however, Bolivia,
“Bolivia… history has consisted of a series of nearly 200 coups and countercoups. Democratic civilian rule was established in 1982, but leaders have faced difficult problems of deep-seated poverty, social unrest, and illegal drug production.”

Anything to do with Bolivia is tainted by its history of political opportunism and corruption. Any Australian comparisons are likewise tainted.

Whatever Bechtel does or did, is likely to be irrelevant in comparison to the cesspool which is Bolivia’s governmental history.

As for “supermarket chain merger” I do not know, it was Hawke and Keating who allowed it to happen. More of their socialist incompetence I guess

col,

I have worked at a public school for ten years. I eat lunch every day with people who have worked in public education for twenty five. It is as simple as not being able to make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Each year, the government (both labour and conservative if you go back) unfailingly provide less and less money and yet expect more and more to be achieved. Over twenty years ago they began on a quest to trim all the fat. When the fat was all gone, they began cutting away the meat. Now in many areas, the meat is all gone, but they insist on sawing through the bone.

To insist that an institution will inevitably break down simply because it is publicly, not privately run is patently untrue. The school registrars(accountants) do a very good job, but they are hamstrung by a long entrenched policy of choking off funding to the public sector. Yes, there was wastage and duplication, but this could have been addressed without going to the lengths we see today.

The inevitable result of strangling the public sector (at a time when there has never been so much money) has allowed Howard and his cronies to jump on the bandwagon shouting "See! We told you publicly run institutions don't work. We need to gradually phase them out in favour of private ownership" If they don't work at all, it's for the simple reason that they have been purposely bled out of existence.

And col, regardless of how many coups and uprisings a country may have had, please forward a relevent argument as to just how a multinational company gaining and then excercising the power to deny people drinking water can possibly be called "irrelevent"

Fozz “I have worked at a public school for ten years.”

So I take it, whatever you say about “education” is most likely subject to your declared vested interest.

“but they insist on sawing through the bone”
I must admit, if it were me, I would find someone who appreciated my efforts more.
Nothing embitters the soul more than not being appreciated or getting plain frustrated.
I am sure it is not a good attitude which you present for the education of the impressionable young minds of your clients.

Strange how you decry people having the right to access private education and then come here to criticize the public system, which from your insider knowledge you admit is failing on all fronts.

Which would you choose for your children, private education which you pay for or (what you claim) is inadequate public education which we all pay for, regardless of if we use it or not?

Bolivia – well I know nothing about the arrangements which resulted in Bechtel supposedly owning the water rights of Bolivia, except to say,
1 They would have only acquired such rights by paying one of those “Bolivian governments” a fair bit for them.

2 Whilst the capitalist system works well in many instances, when it is in bed with corrupt government, things will go from bad to worse.

The problem is not capitalism, it is the corrupt government and when we look at almost every South American country, what those ex Spanish and Portuguese colonies inherited from their historic colonial masters has been, without exception, far less beneficial to their colonial stewardship than that Australia inherited from the British.

I urge anyone with an ounce of common sense to vote consistently to restrict the authority of governments of all persuasions to a minimum, rather than be sucked in to empowering them to do everything for us and getting seriously disappointed.

Give any politician authority and it is always at risk of abuse. Better the user pays and has the right to not pay when he thinks the service is cr*p.

col,

Please refer back to my last post, the key points seem to have escaped you.

Since we seem to have reached the stage where all we are going to do is attempt to have the last word, why don't we start our own little forum where we can happily trade cheap insults back and forth.

I admire your desperation to be right. It's just that you are wrong. Are you related to John Laws by any chance?

Yawn.

Fozz “I admire your desperation to be right. It's just that you are wrong”

I support a system which respects individual choice.

I support a system which empowers individuals, yourself included, to make personal choices and be wrong, instead of being fed the dross which anonymous bureaucrats deem sufficient for our needs, a bland and tasteless concoction of mediocrity and utilitarianism.

I support a system which allows everyone to rise like an eagle or remain a turkey, based on our
ability to make good choices
personal energy
commitment to achievement
and most of all
personal vision.

I am sorry that you lack the ability, energy, commitment and vision to believe in yourself and think that I am wrong.

I have been told all my life how wrong I am.

I will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that if I am wrong, I still lead my life my way.
The problem with following the course you suggest, one where our choices are made by the bureaucrats and faceless freaks who control socialism, is I would not live at all, I would merely exist (oh 1984).

Cattle and sheep “exist”, man was born to be more. We can only be more by making the right decisions and exercising personal freewill.

That you think that is wrong indicates lack of vision.

So go off and be “right” and I will go and be "wrong".
It is just, by being "wrong" I will not be coming after you for extra taxes or telling you to curb your lifestyle or life choices to pander to my notions of fairness or equality.

I will be happy to see you go and to never hear from you again. Whilst you are doing that, I will continue to build my businesses, employ people to help me earn more, enjoy my sea view, indulge my philanthropy, drive the Bentley up to town and recall how it was when I was a kid, wearing my brothers hand me downs because my Dad was a railway worker and that is all we could afford.