Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Today in the Globe

So I have a letter in today's Globe and Mail and appropriately for Valentine's Day it's on the so called 'Lovesick Astronaut' Captain Nowak and a frustrating opinion piece on her by Sandy Naiman.

Today's issue also has an uncharacteristically insightful piece by Ibbitson on why selling off Canada Post would be a bad idea, noting that the privatization tide may have peaked and that necessary regulation of public services gone private can end up costing more and being less efficient than simply keeping them public.

For Ibbitson this seems almost like a road to Damascus moment, but his recent stuff on the Tories judicial meddling has been good too.

4 comments:

RossK said...

Congrats - read it in print but didn't make the connection at the time.

And, thanks for pointing out Ibby's 'change' - thought I was going a little soft when I found myself agreeing with him recently.

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Cliff said...

Yeah, but then they do something like what they did a couple weeks ago, and run a piece by him sneering at the idea of a federal no scab law - on a news page, with no opinion label and no usual columnist photo.

The Globe and Mail part of a conglomerate that owns a federally regulated phone company presents the opinion that banning scabs in federally regulated industrusties is a bad idea as a factual news story. What a shock, huh?

RossK said...

Ya - and it will be interesting to hear/read what they have to say if this public WiFi thing really gets going....

Here in Vancouver, so far, it's been all scare all the time, as in, 'If we have that the terras and the pedos will be able to run wild'.

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Cliff said...

Having worked in Telecom - in High Speed internet specifically - I can tell you they are going insane trying to wring every penny out of it while they can. They know the broadband connected universe should be making them more money than it does, but every pay-per-service ends up costing more to run then they make out of it as people discover there's always a free version out there somewhere.

They're desperate to lock people in long term - so desperate that one company -ahem- offers a free computer if you promise three years fealty to their high speed service. This was in response to a 'churn' rate that was through the roof once people actually tried the service.

And because their biggest fear is the whole high priced broadband paradigm is about to become obsolete. The anti-net neutrality public internet, top tier internet dream they've been sniffing at is the sound of desperation in executive boardrooms stinking of flop sweat and cheap cologne.

Nothing but love for the telecom executive class though - really.

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