I connected to the NBN on the 8/12/2019. I had no choice of course, it's that or nothing. Nothing much changed, I still can't get a U tube video in HD.

The connection died on the 24Th. Wow that stood the test of time. Thanks KRudd.

My provider said, "It's not us, it's the NBN".

The NBN says "we'll be there to fix it on the second of next year". Wow great prompt service, I think the whole street is out.

Come the second & the NBN says, "Oops, can't make it, try the 8Th".

Just 2 questions,

Can government run anything & get it right?
Did KRudd ever get anything right?

Only to be expected given the two idiots involved: Rudd then Turnbull.

Hasbeen,

The NBN has turned out that way because Tony Abbott refused to go with a full optic cable system opting for a cheap out of date system that was bound to fail as soon as he gave the job to Malcolm Turnbull whom Abbott told us was the man who invented the internet.

People like you were easily fooled and now you are paying the price. Tough bananas, sucker!

Can government run anything & get it right? Nope.

Did KRudd ever get anything right? Probably not.

I know what it's like to have nightmare dramas with the internet.
18mths back they did our upgrade.

There's 2 houses on the property where I live and the internet was shared at that time with the previous owner who lived in one of the houses, as there was only one phone line available.

At that time the internet was in the previous owners name so at the time he moved to his new property months prior to the handover we needed to change the service into our name.

Unfortunately the owner cancelled the service instead of transferring it so we had to sign up again.

We signed up for the phone and internet package, and the ADSL service was in the process of being connected.
They'd already come and connected the phone, which wasn't needed, we just wanted internet, and they just needed to switch it on.

We were told technicians would come and nobody ever showed up and it went on for a few weeks.
Eventually we were told that they were no longer doing ADSL connections at our local telephone exchange, and that we'd have to wait 3 months until they installed a mini-node closer to our house.
So we waited.

Some months later, we eventually got connected but the service was terrible.
They never put the mini node-in and connected the NBN directly to the exchange 1.2 k's away.

Again dealing with them to come and look and find the problem was a nightmare.
Eventually they said there was an issue in the firmware of the modem my ISP provided, but it took them 6 months and me opening about 20 issue requests before they figured it out.

Then they said "Oh, we do have a known issue with our modems firmware"
- Like somehow I should've known....

Dealing with these people can really test the limits of your patience.
Often you can't even understand what the hell they're saying.

Anyone who thinks the NBN has been cheap is not too bright. I wonder how much the full optic cable would have cost, & just how much would be installed by now.

Perhaps the idiot KRudd who had a bright idea, did his math in a few seconds, on the back of an envelope, got it all wrong but still rushed in. Should have used a whole sheet of paper.

Dear Hasbeen,

You are taking the piss I assume.

Blaming Rudd for a crappy copper connection to your home rather than the planned optical fiber? Surely even you can't be that clueless.

It cost over $400 million to exit the fiber to the home purely to fulfill a crappy promise by Abbott. It was the greatest piece of sabotage to Australia's future ever done by a political figure.

The result? We are 35th in a list of countries with fiber to the home with only 15% penetration.

New Zealand sits at 10th with well over half its homes connected with 100MB plus speeds with the roll out continuing.

We are eclipsed by countries like Estonia, Malaysia, Portugal, Uruguay, and Russia. Yet we are far wealthier than most of them by far.
http://www.fomsn.com/market-research/sobhana/asian-countries-lead-the-ftth-fttb-global-ranking/

Well old cock, I sure hope you enjoyed voting for this mediocrity but for me we are an embarrassment, sold out to keep Murdoch filling the LNP coffers and giving them constant good press.

Idiocy in all its glory

Well Hassy has a new whipping boy, after almost 50 years the old cock has finally stopped blaming Whitlam for all his troubles and woes, now its Kevin Rudd.

The failure of the NBN lies at the feet of Tony Abbott, Hassy are you completely stupid or what? As Steele has said, the disastrous decision to go copper was made by Abbott alone, Rudd had no input in that decision. Rudd was no genius, he made a number of mistakes, but on the NBN he correctly chose the superior, but more expensive fibre optic cable. BTW Abbott made Rudd look like Einstein when it came to the intelligence department.

I'm not sure of your age Hassy, but it must be about 97 or so, how can you be so old and so stupid at the same time? Every time you start a new discussion, your first post is peppered with pitiful nonsense, untruths, wacko assertions etc, you have done it again. Wake up old sod, and one day on this forum you might actually get something right, but I doubt it.

Do you know what I'm really finding hard to come to terms with?

The country is on fire in an environmental catastrophe and all Hasbeen can worry about is his NBN connection.

I just don't believe it! What sort of a person is this?

Mr O, read my last post on the 'Drip Torch fire bugs' thread addressed to Joe, and it will give you some idea what we are dealing with. It might land me a suspension but I never care, my last one was for 30 days, so what.

Dear Paul1405,

Sorry to hear about the plight of your brother and his family. I hope they are alright.

Yes, I agree with what you had to say to Loudmouth.

This environmental crisis should be making everyone think about what's coming next if we don't act on global warming. Australia is only directly a minor contributor to AGW but the irony is that we seem to be the most affected. It hurts everytime I laugh.

An N be an N
For a' that and a' that,
Its copper show for a' that
But the politicians tho' e'er sae pure
Are but a coof for a' that.

Dan

The NBN has already been superseded by mobile phones. Several months ago my broadband provider transferred my nbn service to another company. The service was so appalling that I decided I would rather put up with a slow and dodgy mobile service. To my surprise my mobile service is much faster and more reliable. In addition, all my calls are free, with good reception. Ignoring the free calls and texts, the cost of my service is about half of what I would pay for a crappy broadband service.

The elephant in the room is all the people accessing the internet via mobile phones. I can't say that I have observed anyone using a mobile with a fibre optic cable plugged into them.

KR is just another in the conga line of idiots believing that they know the future. Unfortunately, NBN Co was just one of his many stuff ups.

I am assuming that hasbean is something different. There is a fair gap between rudd and morrison.

The whole job became out of control as soon as Abbott became whatever he was.

Only a moron would try and blame the NBN failure on the liberals.

The entire exercise was layers lies from Labor. The NBN is yet another vast government monopoly. Labor under estimated the cost by 100%, underestimated the timeline by about 50% and over estimated the payback by nearly 100% even when using legislation to ban competition.

Given the monumental cock up left by labor, the best solution was to remove nearly 40% of the installation cost by used copper to homes whilst still vastly improving the data speeds.

The NBN was socialist wet dream put together by Fwits.

Dear Fester,

You opine;

“The elephant in the room is all the people accessing the internet via mobile phones. I can't say that I have observed anyone using a mobile with a fibre optic cable plugged into them. KR is just another in the conga line of idiots believing that they know the future. Unfortunately, NBN Co was just one of his many stuff ups.”

What a pig ignorant statement.

Your mobile will be supported by the Fron network or a part of Telstra Air if applicable. As a Telstra user a portion of my home modem bandwidth is set aside for random users via WiFi. I have no control over it other than to disallow Telstra Air, but I'm okay with freeloaders like yourself taking a slice after all we are all a community. But to have people like you calling the rest of us ignorant for having the NBN, many who have paid premium rates to have optic fiber installed to the home when it should have been universal, is the height of hubris.

Go educate yourself.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You wrote;

“The entire exercise was layers lies from Labor. The NBN is yet another vast government monopoly. Labor under estimated the cost by 100%, underestimated the timeline by about 50% and over estimated the payback by nearly 100% even when using legislation to ban competition.”

Absolute rot. Please provide a single bit of proof for any of the above. You really have been reduced to hard right talking points haven't you. How about you try and back up this drivel for once.

Thanks, Paul, I'll have a look now.

Joe

Hi Steele,

I dumped the nbn because I could get a superior mobile service along with uncharged calls and texts for less than half the price. Many millions of Australians do the same. Wireless networks are a major challenge to the nbn, something that KR did not foresee with his fibre to the home dream. So much for the state planned economy. When people have a free choice they can make choices that benefit them. That is what I did.

Cheers

Come off it SR, Rudd had a plan, you've got to be joking.

The idiot never got anything past the original thought bubble.

"Did KRudd ever get anything right?"

Well he did get rid of Gillard.

Was the FTTP plan devised in the Rudd era? ISTR it was announced by Gillard.

Either way, it was not perfect, but it was a good investment in the future. There were technical problems and cost overruns, and NBNCo sensibly decided to address these before ramping up the rollout.

Then the Abbott government got in, and promised their "multi technology mix" plan which they said would get it connected faster and cheaper. Their plan was mostly "fibre to the node" and it was so stupid that literally everyone who supported it was either a complete idiot or ignorant of the facts. They based the case for it on an analysis that used a discount rate of 7% at a time when the RBA were willing to lend to commercial banks at 3% IIRC.

Even the one theoretically good part of Abbott's plan: the use of existing HFC infrastructure, was a disaster because they paid way over the odds for it considering the poor condition it was in.

So now we're stuck with a mostly third rate NBN that cost more (and took longer) to implement than the first rate NBN that was originally proposed.

I think we should all take a moment out and have a minute's silence for Hasbeen's NBN connection.

Over the past few years the amount of mobile data on my service has increased ten fold and become faster, whilst the cost has not changed. Meanwhile the cost of the NBN has not changed or perhaps increased a bit. The same exodus would happen to the electricity grid were the cost of battery storage to fall by 80%. Had KRs plan been stuck too it would have cost far more, an NBN service would have cost more, and the exodus would have been more rapid.

I could not care less which idiot or political party did/said what.
This whole NBN rubbish was another snow job ONLY designed as an excuse for some pollies to scam more money out of the system into their own back pockets.
They can't help themselves.
Every time there is a major infrastructure project in the wind you can bet your left jewel, there is a line of these pricks, lined up with their back pockets open.
They do not care about the outcome, they do not care about the bad press or personal vilification because the idea, execution and operation were a failure.
They know they only have a few short years to gouge/steal as much money as possible, then cut and run when they lose the election or their seat.
These are not NORMAL people, they are cold, and arrogant without souls or shame.
They are the epitome of those who would kill their grandmother to make a buck.
So let us not squabble over who spilled the milk, when the milk was sour in the first place.
I have recently finished a development of several houses, I was told that it was my responsibility to install NBN, and if I did not I could be fined several hundred thousand dollars.
I insisted that it was either the responsibility of the builder or the eventual new owner.
The part that really got me was that it was against the law not to install NBN.
I assume I got that wrong, but in defiance I am prepared to stand my ground risking the obvious fines, as I don't accept their premise.
My point is that, for the govt to justify the NBN, they need to make a profit, so that they and their mates make money out of it.
I am incensed at the strategy of making laws to FORCE us to buy/install NBN, whether we want to or not.
Now that's how you make money.
Force something down peoples throats, then legislate to force them to pay for it so they are guaranteed a return.

ALTRAV,

The NBN proposed by Labor was to be a state-of-the-art world leading optic fibre system designed for a 100 year life cycle. Yes it would have cost a lot of money, but money well spent in the long run.

Abbott then came along and turned it upside down ending up with a sub-standard out of date system in order to take money out of the NBN bucket and put it into his slush fund to buy votes at the next federal election.

Why do you think ScuMo is trying so desperately to hang onto his 11 billion dollar slush fund? He can buy a lot of votes with that money.

MrO, I do not disagree.
If you have been paying attention you will know that my hatred towards pollies, goes across party lines.
In other words, I hate ALL politicians, some more than others.
As I keep saying, they are in it for the money.
Now knocking each party or polly individually, does not help because they will do what ever it takes to make sure we, the people, never find out the truth about who actually did what.
They need infrastructure projects so the money starts flowing again.
Each project is another opportunity to skim off some money for themselves.
The problem with the NBN was that whatever the previous govt put in place, the next one tore up, so that it would not feather the previous pollies pockets, instead redirect any graft and kick-backs either into their own pockets or see it stopped altogether so their opposing party stopped receiving any benefits from the project.
Think about it, one party starts up a project, the opposition comes into power and immediately cancels the project.
It's so obvious, and they don't care if we know.
What kind of govt is this?
There has to be a better way.

Hi Mr O,

You speak of the state of the art, bells and whistles, 100 year life internet. What would have been the monthly cost for access? The mobile service I have meets my needs, is far cheaper, and is with me wherever I go. As wonderful and far sighted as KRs dream was, he did not foresee the rapid improvement in the mobile service.

Fester,

I would gladly fork out extra money for a fantastic NBN system. If you want quality than you need to pay for it.

Look at all of the money people have thrown away on buying cheap Chinese crap; if they had paid a bit extra up front they could have bought something from the US or Europe that lasted for years instead of the Chinese crap that they need to replace each year.

Now I'm being told to spend money on a crap Chinese-like NBN that I don't want. Now that's what I call a waste of money. And all because Abbott wanted a slush fund to buy votes to get him put back as a PM.

Hi Mr O,

I just ran a speed test on my no frills mobile service: 25.7mbs/2.57mbs. This is over three times faster and half the price of the crappy NBN service I ditched. It more than meets my needs and is portable to boot. I see no point in paying for a bells and whistles service that is not portable with speeds well beyond what I require. What advantage is it for me to piss money up against a wall for something I don't need?

Fester,

You're throwing me into a spin. I don't think you understood what I said.

Anyway, as long as you are happy that is the main point.

PS I think I will be opting for a mobile service too in lieu of the crappy LNP Chinese-like NBN on offer. Hope that makes you feel better. I know it will make me feel better!

Hi Mr O,

In January 2008, Optus was offering a mobile broadband deal of 400mb per month for $24-99. Currently you can get over sixty times the data with rollover, plus free calls and texts, for the same cost. In addition the service is faster and more reliable. I doubt that many would have foreseen such a change.

I hope you can find something satisfactory.

Cheers

Fester,

Thanks for that information.

We belong to the G20 and have an NBN that puts us on a level with the Third World.

In PNG you pay just over 185 AUD for 13GB/30days. That is data only, no calls. Not making excuses, but we are well above a third world standard, at least in the built up areas.

Cheers

SR,

I admire the selective amnesia of the left whingers. The constantly moving schedules and cost estimates. I remember when Labor had spent $27bn of the $47 original budget yet had only connected <5% of houses and comrade Conjob was making promises that were broken months later.

I also remember the huge wake up call that labor got when they realised the vast cost of replacing the last 40m of line to the houses as they dug through asbestos etc, that this final stretch would cost 10s of $bns more than they had estimated.

The FTTN option was the only option available that would enable the project to come in anywhere near the budget and timeline.

With respect to the payback, the assumption was that the majority of connections would be the higher speed connections however as predicted in a earlier OLO article the vast majority of people were perfectly happy with the slowest and cheapest 25Mb/s option.

Labor in one stroke had banned competition and built a monopoly that would keep Australia's data prices higher than just about every country in the OECD, the fact that wireless was rapidly gaining market share in the US and other countries should have been a wake up call to the moronic Labor dinosaurs.

New Zealand and other countries have better fibre penetrations mostly due to private companies doing it at a fraction of the cost that public companies could.

And before I start dredging up data that you can easily find yourself, perhaps you would justify your vacuous verbiage.

NBN stands for 'No Bloody Network'

Wow, Shadow, that's some pretty impressive spin you're engaged in there!

But you seem to have forgotten that a lot of the money spent was on things other than connections. These included planning and purchasing Telstra infrastructure. And yes, there were more problems with that Telstra infrastructure than anticipated (asbestos is indeed costly to deal with). So they delayed the massive expansion of the rollout until deciding how best to keep costs down.

As we've seen, the FTTN option did NOT allow the project to come in anywhere near the original budget or timeline. But hypothetically, even if it had achieved both, it would still have been incredibly stupid to waste so much money on building third rate infrastructure!

As for competition: building lots of parallel infrastructure is inefficient. The NBN was designed to have competition between contractors and between ISPs, but there is no great advantage in having competition between sets of cables. It was political sabotage, not lack of competition, that made us compare unfavourably with NZ.

Aidan,

Given that the FTTH would require up to an additional $30bn and possibly an extra 5 yrs, the FTTN option was by far the cheapest and most practical solution.

My house got FTTN and I took the 25Mb/s option even though the line tested >50Mb/s and was still able to run upto 3 streaming channels simultaneously. The drop outs were at peak periods and were due to the bandwidth demand that the ISPs lacked the capability.

Considering that nearly 90% opted for the 25Mb/s option, the need for FTTH was political not practical.

Perhaps you could respond with technical issues rather than repeating labor talk lines.

The the reality is that when Labor got elected in 2007, mobile internet was not cost competitive. Mobile costs have since dropped to less than one sixtieth of what they were then. The profitability of a business does relate to the cost of the commodity it is selling.

Shadow,
>Considering that nearly 90% opted for the 25Mb/s option, the need for FTTH was political not practical.

On the contrary:
Firstly, the NBN should be built for future needs, not just present needs.
Secondly, FTTN is unreliable, and many people have suffered dropouts when it rains. And I don't just mean drops in speed - I mean the internet connection has actually dropped out.
Thirdly, FTTN has a significantly higher running cost due to the extra electricity consumed.
Fourthly, there is significant scope for further reductions in FTTH cost.

FTTN is sn absurd false economy, and the decision to build it was political not practical.

Bottom line is like most marxist ideology (big Government) schemes are overpriced, run inefficiantly and in many cases do more harm than good. The sooner the Liberal party rids itself of regressives messing in people's lives the better. They are only marginally better than Labour. Getting rid of Turnbull, Bishop and Pyne was a good start.

Aidan,

"Firstly, the NBN should be built for future needs, not just present needs."

As the future is largely 5G wireless, the FTTH is already partially obsolete. And FTTN can easily be transitioned to FTTH when needed, but the expense of doing so can be avoided until necessary. The occasional dropping out of the signal due to old connection deterioration would be such an example.

The additional power consumption is insignificant and largely balanced out by the huge savings of not needing a UPS at the home

Shadow,
>As the future is largely 5G wireless, the FTTH is already partially obsolete.
People were saying that about 4G a few years ago...

>And FTTN can easily be transitioned to FTTH when needed,
No, that's far from easy.

>but the expense of doing so can be avoided until necessary.
The total expense is much higher. Remember, to fudge the value for money test so FTTN passed it, they had to use a discount rate of 7% at a time when the RBA cash rate was less than half that and falling!

>The occasional dropping out of the signal due to old connection deterioration would be such an example.
As if NBNCo would upgrade your connection just because that happens!

>The additional power consumption is insignificant
Across Australia it's similar to the power consumption of Hobart! How much power consumption do you regard as significant?

>and largely balanced out by the huge savings of not needing a UPS at the home
Whether your connection is FTTH or FTTN does not determine whether or not you need a UPS.

__________________________________________________________________________________

runner,
Government should be made more efficient - the question is how to do so. Many think the answer is to keep it as small as possible, and limit its resources, because they assume that will make it more careful about what money is spent on. But in reality that leads to short termism and absurd false economies, and FTTN is a good example of that.

The real way to make government more efficient is to remove the restrictions that prevent it from making long term decisions, and to increase transparency so the public can scrutinise every decision it makes.

I'm rather surprised you said...
> The sooner the Liberal party rids itself of regressives messing in people's lives the better
...because in another thread you opposed secularism and now you appear to be for it. What is it you want instead? Should the government mess in people's lives or not?

The only way to make government more efficient is to ban public servants being in unions, & to sunset clauses in all bureaucratic contracts.

% years in private industry for every 5 years in government child minding centers would help give bureaucrats some idea of what work really is.

Turns out my NBN failure was faulty workmanship down the road somewhere, that was washed out by a couple of inches of rain. God help us when we get some real rain, we could be out for months. I was one of a few. Wonderful government workmanship as usual.

Hasbeen,
>The only way to make government more efficient is to ban public servants being in unions,
Silly idea based on a prejudiced few of unions that does not bear any resemblance to how they are today.
Indeed it's also a silly idea based on a prejudiced few of public servants that does not bear any resemblance to how they are today.
You seem to have slept through the 1980 and '90s!

>& to sunset clauses in all bureaucratic contracts.
What would you regard as the defining features of a "bureaucratic contract"?

> % years in private industry for every 5 years in government child minding centers
> would help give bureaucrats some idea of what work really is.
Getting rid of those who are good at their job, based on the delusion that work really is just one thing!

>God help us when we get some real rain, we could be out for months. I was one of a few.
So do you now understand why FTTN is such a bad idea?

> Wonderful government workmanship as usual.
What makes you think the work was done by government employees not contractors?

Aidan,

4G was never meant to be a replacement for hard wired internet.

"It promises mobile data speeds that far outstrip the fastest home broadband network currently available to consumers. With speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second, 5G is set to be as much as 100 times faster than 4G. Low latency is a key differentiator between 4G and 5G."

Installing a 5G tower at each node would supply network speeds equal to the NBN.

>"Remember, to fudge the value for money test so FTTN passed it, they had to use a discount rate of 7% at a time when the RBA cash rate was less than half that and falling!" - That was labor based on its first cost estimate.

>"Across Australia it's similar to the power consumption of Hobart!"
Bollocks

Shadow Minister,

You're an engineer so why don't you get your toolbox out and don your overalls and get out there into the field and fix the NBN for us?

Mr 0,

You're an arts major, why don't you sit on your arse and complain, Oh wait, you're doing that already.

Shadow Minister,

I said elsewhere that you think Arts grads viz archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, philosophers., have no use in society and your comment above shows that what I said is correct.

You think that the only people who have any use in society are those who have vocational education viz engineers, doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants, truck drivers, etc.

I have no problems with that as long as you and people like you are content to go through life not knowing about Arts things like history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, etc.

PS I can think of a host of Arts grads who have done amazing things in their lives as a result of having come up through the Arts. Lawrence of Arabia comes immediately to mind.

If you want to be of help then don your overalls and get off your arse and get out there with your toolbox and start fixing Hasbeen's NBN connection for him.

Mr 0,

That you have to go back a century largely proves my point.

Secondly, your inane comment that I fix H's internet is why those of your ilk are regarded with such contempt.

While with the correct diagnostic equipment and parts I could almost certainly "fix the problem", the costs of my time, my travel and the hire and purchase of equipment and components would cost orders of magnitude more than the 1 hr visit by the supplier's technician with his equipped van.

A friend of my daughter has a BA and has a job at a local radio station as a producer, and is welcome at our house because he is an educated and engaging young man and not a pompous know it all.

Shadow Minister,

I'm sure it's very obvious to your daughter's friend that you do not know anything about Arts things like sociology, history, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, etc., which is probably the reason he refrains from mentioning these things in your presence.

He's doing exactly what I would do by not engaging with you in a discussion on Arts things because it would be a total waste of time.

Just put your overalls on, pick up your toolbox, and start making yourself useful by putting your vocational training into fixing things.

Mr O, SR is only echoíng what millions of others have been saying for years.
"You get an arts degree, because you can't hack it trying to get a 'real' degree".
YOU and other arts degree grads might think an arts degree is something, well considering that to get ANY other type of degree from engineering to, well even an apprenticeship, takes 4 - 5 years.
An arts degree from memory can take as little as three.
And anyway, don't kid yourself, what is known as a profession, even plumbing, has a REAL demand in life.
You guys and your intangible and incalculable course and eventual accomplishment, having achieved an arts degree, have in fact achieved a qualification based on nothing, and so it is that an arts degree has always been considered "good for nothing".
Only those with such a degree speak so highly about having one and what it is supposed to encompass.
All the subjects you mention have little or no substance or use in the 'real' world.
They are subjects that are exactly that, subjective.
They hold sway to no actual and measurable goals or achievements.
They consist of personal opinions and extremely impossible means of measuring success and conclusions.
ie; it's a theoretical degree.

Mr O, while I think of it, the greater majority would welcome or need SM and his toolbox, where-as nobody wants or needs someone with an arts degree.
No sorry, that's not quite true.
Only someone who also has an arts degree will entertain another with an arts degree, but the sum total of their getting together would be for naught, because after their meeting, nothing of any value or worth was conceived or forthcoming.
Just hot air, with no practical outcome.
NONE!
Where-as when SR picks up his tool box to leave, he has achieved something by having restored someones NBN.
Now that is of use to the people, not some dreamy air head sitting around drinking skinny latte's all day discussing a lot of irrelevant rubbish, that only they could discuss because anything more would be too hard and they would actually have to study/think and learn stuff, which is beyond their mental and scholastic capacity, ability and aptitude.
So a BA sounds better and easier than an apprenticeship.
Yeah, that's just what the world needs, more lackademics.

Mr 0,

You arrogance is only outstripped by you ignorance.

Just about every degree is aligned to a vocation such as engineering, law, business, medicine, architecture, archaeology, painting, sculpture, etc. It is intelligence, persistence and flair that separates the street artist from the Picasso, the back room engineer from the Elon Musk etc. That you are stuck writing pointless reports that no one will read shows that while you have the pieces of paper, you have none of the qualities to expand on them.

Secondly, the assumption that I am ignorant of all things artistic is yet another moronic assumption on your part and I have no doubt that in several areas of art and history I know far more than you.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You write;

"A friend of my daughter has a BA and has a job at a local radio station as a producer, and is welcome at our house because he is an educated and engaging young man and not a pompous know it all."

Just wondering if he realises having two pompous know it alls in the same house would be too much?

You miss one point ALTRAV.

An arts degree is the bureaucrats preferred qualification for a job as a pen pusher in the public service, the preferred sheltered workshop for most of them.

Hassy, gotcha.

BTW, sorry in my haste, in my previous post I wrote SR, it should have been SM (for Shadow Minister).
SR, now it's your turn you most pompous of the pompous.
It's a good thing you are not quite as articulate or knowledgeable as you may believe.
I want to bring your attention to something that even though may not be relevant to this topic, but never-the-less needs to be conveyed to you as soon as possible.
I have assumed that you have been made aware of Josephus's link regarding the fact that all this GW, CC rubbish is beginning to unwind in your faces as we write.
NASA has just admitted, and shown us with satellite pics, that areas once thought to be dying are now greening up.
Go figure, they too have admitted they were wrong!
HA!
Here's the link, read it and weep!

https://summit.news/2020/01/09/glacier-park-in-montana-set-to-remove-glaciers-will-all-be-gone-by-2020-signs/

Let's see what you've got as a come-back on this latest round of debunking.
You guys keep preaching the facts.
I'll keep stating the truth!
And the truth shall set you free!

Shadow Minister,

You have never studied Arts things like history, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, etc., but you say you know all about that stuff. We know you have never studied Arts things because you told us that you have a BSc(Eng), BCom & MBA. Unless you want us to believe that engineering and business colleges are teaching the scholarly Arts courses.

Please do us all a favour and put on your overalls, grab your toolbox, and get yourself down to doing what engineers are vocationally trained to do.

Hasbeen,

An Arts degree is what one does when one wants to study things like history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, etc. All the things that you do not know anything about.

Hassy, SM, I don't know why you bother with Mr O.
If he wants to believe that an arts degree is somehow of value to the public, compared to engineers, let him.
He will be alone on his soap box, and he knows it, he is fighting for his very existence and worth.
An arts degree is like pre-school compared with an engineering degree.
I know I started an engineering degree and when I got to calculus I said that's it, I know how smart I am and I was not that smart.
So I did what came naturally to me from childhood, and became an industrial designer, specialising in automotive design/engineering.
You see as it turns out, engineers actually work under me.
Many people believe engineers are designers.
They are human computers/calculators, the job of designing, the creation of ideas is where the designer comes into it, then gives the design to an engineer to assess it's structural integrity.
These days we have computer programs that do this thereby sidestepping engineers.
They have not yet, nor will they ever create anything, even a computer program that is capable of duplicating or replacing a "designer".
But I stress one important thing, you can LEARN to become an engineer, you CAN'T LEARN to become a designer.
It has to be natural to you and it just comes naturally.
As the saying goes;"You can learn to paint, but you can't learn to be an artist"!

ALTRAV,

Guess what, I have a degree in mechanical engineering, which I did before pursuing my interests in Arts.

If you weren't able to get past first year calculus then there must be something wrong with you.

One thing you are right about is that one does not need to have a degree in engineering to be an engineer. Doing a degree in engineering is one of the great regrets in my life. Absolute waste of time, energy and money.

ALTRAV I was already pretty comfortable with calculus & Co-ordinate Geometry from my Math 1 & 2 honors courses in high school.

I have a brain to which math comes easily, & I was told math & physics honors were the only way to win a scholarship to uni, other than a teachers scholarship. It worked & General Motors gave me one to do mechanical engineering. Civil engineering would have been a lot more use later, out in the Pacific islands, but that wasn't available to a poor kid from the bush.

Meanwhile don't forget it is engineers who have to keep the wheels on your beautiful creations.

I got bored with Pagewood, & joined the navy to fly fighters, Much more fun, & the navy even had a system & encouraged us to continue our studies through Durham university, UK. They has "schoolies" on board to co-ordinate & help us with this.

Later I went motor racing, & a brilliant amateur engineer who's day job was as an investigator of sales tax with the tax dept. showed me just how little the universities had taught us.

Together we built the most successful racing engine ever in Oz for my F2 Brabham. It finished every race it was entered for, second in the first, then won either outright, or it's class win in every race for the next 20 months. It was only sold when I was given a formula 1 drive. It was his privately gained knowledge of metals & how to use them that made it so reliable & successful.

Yes I know Mr O is a bit of a joke, he actually thinks sociology, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, are useful, where as it is only wasteful tax payer funding that keeps them going. The less of them we have the richer we will be.

Granted archaeology cam make for interesting documentaries, if they weren't usually aimed for such a dumb audience.

Hassy, your a breath of fresh air in an otherwise smelly place.
I applaud you on your achievements, now that's what I'm talking about.
I realise that not everyone can be as capable as the next guy, it is something you either have or you don't.
You are born with it.
I have always felt sorry for people who have no natural ability or passion.
I get the impression some of them feel lost and confused as to their future and opportunities in life.
I was fortunate, because I was born into an engineering family, and like yourself had one of the best teachers who also had the runs on the board to prove it;
My father.
But I was also lazy, and could not be bothered trying to put the effort into something I KNEW I would never need.
So I focused on what came naturally and enjoyed the most, in doing so, as the saying goes; I'VE NEVER WORKED A DAY IN MY LIFE!

ALTRAV, wouldn't it be great if we could just get this understanding to our kids when they need it.

My son is much more gifted than me. He has way surpassed me in ability now, but we couldn't get him to work at school. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, & despite also being a natural at math & physics, would not put in enough effort in to get the necessary results to make it through the selection process.

After 12 years of engineering in the navy he is very highly skilled. However he keeps coming up with new ideas for earning a living, so I don't think he is really happy.

Yes isn't it great when your job is what you would want to do as a hobby. I've been lucky that way too, pity my son isn't so lucky.

Hasbeen,

Please continue. Tell about when you became an astronaut and founded the first colony on Mars but no one knows about it because it had to be kept a secret from the KGB.

Mr O, actually I don't know how you found out, but yes it's true Hassy is one of the team leaders on the Mars project.
Unfortunately for you, your big mouth and little brain has now put you in harms way and as of now there is a contract out on you for divulging top, top secret information.
So I would not take the same route back, whenever you go somewhere.
Always try to be in crowded places, and never, never, stand still too long.
And one last very important piece of advice, ALWAYS look over your shoulder.

ALTRAV,

I don't think I need to worry about Hasbeen because he's off the planet, so to speak.

Mr 0,

Once again I am staggered by the degree of arrogance and ignorance that you can display in one sentence. You are essentially claiming that only studies done within a formal university course have any meaning which is moronic. Plenty of books, articles and videos are available to grant anyone that is interested as much knowledge of history and the arts etc as any undergraduate degree.

P.S. I agree that your engineering degree was a waste of time and money not only for you, but for the university, the taxpayer etc.

Shadow Minister,

If you believe that then you are living in a fantasy world.

Keep thinking that way and you'll end up like Loudmouth, awarding yourself degrees in all sorts of disciplines.

Stick to your vocation which you have been trained for and leave the Arts things like history, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, philosophy, etc., to the Arts grads who have formal training in these subjects.

I must admit that I have met plenty of engineers who are interested in the Arts things but am yet to met an Arts grad who is interested in engineering things. No need to be a genius to work out why.

Mr O

With "leave the Arts things like history, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, philosophy, etc., to the Arts grads who have formal training in these subjects" You are essentially claiming that an arts degree is vocational training, however, as most of the arts subjects are rote learning an arts degree is pretty much awarded to confirm attendance. I will happily leave the creation of pointless dissertations that no one will read to those with formal arts qualifications.

As for why artists aren't interested in engineering is principally because don't have the mental horsepower.

Shadow Minister,

You just referred to Arts grads as being artists. Goodness gracious do you really think that Arts grads are artists? I've got a BA and two MAs and I don't refer to myself as an artist. Where do you get your facts from? The back of a cereal box I'm guessing.

The reason Arts grads are not interested in finding out about engineering stuff is simply because they see engineering as a trade whereas the Arts things like history, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, philosophy, etc., are scholarly pursuits.

Now put your overalls on, pick up your toolbox, and get out and fix Hasbeen's bloody NBN connection just like the good little engineer we all know you are.

Mr O, Oh you really are a contemptuous, arrogant, uncouth, and of course, pompous fool.
What a most stupid and way out of the park thing to say, even think.
You pathetic moron, and I choose my words carefully, so that when fools like you don't REALLY understand, I choose easy ones so as to not confuse you because of your superior education in BA or is it FA or is it BO, I can't remember, because something you said waaaaaay back when, struck a note with me that you in fact do not have any engineering qualifications at all, and it appears that you suddenly decided to elevate yourself to SM's level, because you realised that he was in fact smarter and has a higher standing than you, and this incensed you.
Hey, Mr O, I didn't finish my engineering degree, and, from what you said in the past, I know I'm smarter than you, but not as smart as Hassy.
Do I go competing with those smarter than me?
NO!
Now to clarify; all your qualifications fall under the heading of ABSTRACT, and your attitude to attempt to elevate yourself to a level you are clearly not worthy of has demonstrated that you are incapable of accepting your lot in life and because of this you can be described as implacable, amongst other short comings and failings.
So get it through your thick head, engineers are invaluable in the betterment of life and mankind in general.
BA's are good for FA, and are as useful as tits on a bull, they fall under the bus or is it the heading of inane subjects/coarses
and vocations.
Next time I want someone to give me a fictional or imaginary report on the structural integrity of something intangible, I'll be sure to call you because you will have the correct and inane qualifications to suite.
On the other hand, if I want an ACTUAL and REAL report on the structural integrity of something real and tangible, I will call on Hassy.

ALTRAV,

You have a habit of writing a lot of irrelevant nonsense, which reminds me of that saying "A man with little knowledge takes a long time to tell you what little he knows."

If you think Arts things are useless then just stop referring to Arts things in your posts.

I have to use a lot of words, because I am talking to people like you, so that you can all get treated equally, see, no prejudice or bias.
As for your mention of arts, I think your trying to shove words in my mouth in an attempt to make an otherwise moot point.
I have never described your inane qualifications as ART, I would not dare to elevate you to such a noble and natural calling.
I have in fact described your chosen path as inane.
Is that what you meant to say?

ALTRAV,

I never said that you refer to Arts grads as being artists.

It is Shadow Minister who refers to Arts grads as being artists.

I think you are just upset because it has dawned on you that the burning of fossil fuels is the only probable cause of the global warming we have experienced over the past 240 years that can be correlated with the rise in mean global temperature.

As long as you keep denying this fact people like Soot 'Beam up me Scotty' Morrison and Barnaby Joyce will keep using you to their advantage.

PS Have you noticed how all the LNP politicians have all of a sudden become climate change warriors? Next thing you know they will be singing praises to little Greta Thunberg.

MrO, the only reason we are experiencing anything is because we are coming out of a 'mini ice-age'.
So of course it is only natural, if we are seeing any rise at all of the global temp, and I say IF.
There is NO starting point as to what is the normal or temp starting point because it is an ever fluctuating number going through hot and cold cycles every few hundred years.
Right now we are going through a warming cycle, and it will continue till it begins to cool down again.
And of course all those alarmists or their future guard will all demand vindication that they were right and all the things they promoted to mitigate GW and CC worked and the earth will begin it's cooling period or cycle once more.
Meanwhile the idiots will try desperately to take credit for absolutely nothing, because if we do nothing at all we will end up at exactly the same conclusion, except without making certain people much wealthier, and us much poorer.
The only reason any politician even breathes, is to be in power, so those idiots will say and do ANYTHING that keeps them in power, but even though Morrison is right in his original stance, it's a shame that morons like you affect the political bent in so many detrimental ways that you cannot begin to comprehend.
He has stuffed his chances at the next election for listening to the stupid media and public, in doing so he's already lost the next election.
As for me being upset about burning anything, NO I'm annoyed that fools like you follow the fools and can't figure things out for yourself.
We have NOTHING to do with GW and CC, it has everything to do with the earth coming out of it's cooling cycle, which it does every few hundred years.
And it will reach a certain temp and then begin to go down again into another cooling cycle, which we won't be around to witness.
So this is what is really going on, NOT what we are told.

Mr 0,

"You just referred to Arts grads as being artists."

For an Arts grad, your English is terrible, as I clearly didn't, and your vocational training was wasted.

Actually most humanities graduates are not as pretentious bigots as you claim. I guess your inflated sense of self worth is proportional to your irrelevance.

Shadow Minister,

My English got me through a BA and two MAs at two of Australia's premier universities so I must be doing something right. So one could say I've got the runs on the board in that respect.

You on the other hand have never done a scholarly degree; you have only done engineering and business studies, neither of which requires a high level of English usage.

Actually I've picked up a trace of Chinglish in your writings which doesn't surprise me given the level of your vocational training and area of work.

Shadow Minister,

Make sure you wear a clean pair of overalls when you go to fix Hasbeen's NBN connection. We don't want Hasbeen opening the front door to find a grubby engineer standing on his porch.

Mr 0

Wow, what blatant sinophobic racism, your bigotry knows no bounds. FYI my ancestry is UK based.

Your shoddy English is an indictment on the standards of your qualifications as the concept of context and even the definition of scholarly eludes you.

Given your disdain for anyone that gets their hands dirty, I infer that your life's work has no value other than your own self pleasure.

Come off it Mr O. We give BAs & MAs to foreign students who need an interpreter to talk to Oz born class mates, or academics.

Tell me, I have often wondered, how many Kelloggs Cornflakes packet tops do you have to send in these days to get a BA.

I'll take a grubby mechanic, engineers don't get grubby, any day in preference to an academic dill with his head stuffed up his nether regions.

MrOpinion,

Anthropology has a place in the world; have you read Ian Hogbin's "Island of Menstruating Men"?

Now, there was a groundbreaking book that has had a profound effect on life in general and medical science in particular, it far outweighs any contributions by engineers to society's wellbeing.

Is Mise,

Yes, I read it in the first year of my anthropology degree almost 40 years ago. I must be honest and tell you that I cannot remember a word of it now. I assume it would come back to me if I picked it up again.

I studied Anthropology under Peter Lawrence at Sydney Uni, took an Arts Degree and later Engineering, a much more useful degree, although I only did it out of interest, as a Mature Age student, and have never worked as a Certificated Engineer.
My engineering experience has been of the practical kind both as an Armourer and as a Machine Shop Foreman within the Dept. of Defence.

Is Mise,

At last, a kindred spirit.

I did my BA at Sydney and also had Peter Lawrence in the 1980s. Did you have Bill Newall, Peter Hinton, Daryl Feil, Vivian Kondos, Diane Austin, etc?

I took a BE in mechanical engineering prior to starting the BA. I still work for engineering firms.

I followed up with a couple of MAs and outside of work I do independent research on the environmental sociology of water. If I build up enough knowledge on the subject I might turn it into an MA thesis.

Hopefully we can have some interesting discussions together.

Mr Opinion,

Bill Newall rings a bell, I mainly remember Peter Lawrence, and David Walsh and Peter White, who were both from Archaeology (IIRC).
Happy days!!

Is Mise,

David Walsh was the linguistics anthropologist noted for work in Melanesia, especially on Bislama.

Peter White was of course prehistory.

Bill Newall was China, Japan and India.

I recall Lawrence always mentioning the Garia as if it was the only society left in the world.

It's very possible that you might have attended the same lectures as me.

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