Another example perhaps. The ex CEO of telstra and his bloated pay package. I just shudder when thinking about it. Here's the thing.

I have an older passport jacket. It was issued in 2004. On it are all the international numbers for AustraliaDirect, a local number in the country of question which patches you thru to an Australian operator for the purposes of making a reverse charge call - say for a medical emergency insurance matter.

In 2006 it worked - come 2008 and no longer. Don't know exactly when the service went down.

I went to the telstra help site. Pitiful doesn't say it. No help for a question of this kind. No category for "other." The operators, several emails later were still pushing out irrelevant pre-written material and never responded to the salient issue.

I wrote to foreign affairs about two matters. They responded quickly to the first unrelated matter, but no comment re Australia Direct.

What a waste of money paying that particular clown was.

*Truth is, business is not rocket science and business people are mostly not rocket scientists,*

DreamOn, well clearly its beyond you lol. Fact is that four out of
five small businesses still close down, as their owners are busy
dreaming, much like yourself.

What on earth has what happened in America, got to do with Australia?
The American people voted for George Bush, he screwed up, everyone
pays. That is democracy for you, not perfect, but the best that we
have.

Yup, insurance rates would be going up in Victoria, they have just
had lots of big fires. Don't blame the insurers, they simply pass
on their costs. In was Victorian Govt inaction which meant that
there were huge fuel loads in the countryside, ready to burn.

West Australians are miles ahead on this stuff, but learn the hard
way. Sadly its pensioners who get hit with these increasing
premiums as well. Blame your politicians, not the insurers, for
they don't make the rules.

What Telstra paid its CEO, is really up to the shareholders. If you
don't like Telstra, so go elsewhere.

As arrogant as the last fella was, he got the basics very right.
He got rid of many conflicting systems, with huge maintenance costs
for each of them and brought in a whole new single platform, which
saves huge amounts each year in maintenance. The net result was
that I have access to mobile broadband at quite reasonable cost,
cheaper in fact then the old backward dial up.

When Telstra was still Govt owned, they used to slug me up to 9$
per hour for internet access, they were so backward.

So in the bigger scheme of things, whatever they paid the last guy,
hardly matters. But that is really up to the shareholders, so unless
you are a shareholder, its really none of your business.

I'd like to make a couple of extra comments for the interested pensioners in the group.

As for you though yappy, I find that your coherency has degenerated below standard and also point out as of last I heard, the australian government was still the largest shareholder in Telstra, and not to go into historical ownership issues, that makes it the business of all Australian's, so your assertions about it not being our business seem to be somewhat more absurd than usual.

..

Back to the matter at hand, making the Ozzie Pensioners $'s go further. The online markets is one example that I have offered when challenged by yappy to make a thoughtful contribution.

To go on, I note that in the main stream news we have had the qld liberal party make a contribution re EBay recently, and also had the sale of tickets for dinner for four with *PM Rudd* Last bid I saw was $AU15,000 and climbing.

As for foreign imports, here is an interesting listing that I just noticed. It's not something that I'd personally recommend as it falls into the category of what I call "donate to an ex-pat" but do not otherwise dispute that it may well suit the purposes of some people

AND

for the purposes of this discussion certainly gives you and idea of what's both credibly available and achievable.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/IMPORT-FRM-CHINA-IMPORT-WITH-AN-ENGLISH-BLOKE-IN-CHINA_W0QQitemZ220425786042QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_Wholesale_Lists?hash=item33526692ba&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A1|66%3A2|39%3A1|240%3A1308|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

Until the next thread, best of luck.