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Post by Gerard on Dec 7, 2013 22:40:05 GMT -5
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Post by Gerard on Dec 7, 2013 22:44:33 GMT -5
. . . The only way I can make money from such a transaction is if I can sell something as a result of my journey. . . But don't overlook all the dear old ladies and friendly elderly gentlemen who a little bit lose out as a result of that same transaction. . .
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Post by ahinton on Dec 8, 2013 3:48:05 GMT -5
How can you "ban" property"? The tongue of a latter-day Thatcherite! Not at all. You cannot "ban" property because it wll always be owned by someone, even if that someone is a state rather than an individual or corporation.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2013 3:48:22 GMT -5
If I may address your final point directly, Gerard: . . . The only way I can make money from such a transaction is if I can sell something as a result of my journey. . . But don't overlook all the dear old ladies and friendly elderly gentlemen who a little bit lose out as a result of that same transaction. . . How?
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Post by Gerard on Dec 8, 2013 5:36:27 GMT -5
Please refer to Professor Cairnes's Character and Logical Method of Political Economy, upon perusal of which all doubt will be resolved: ia600406.us.archive.org/0/items/characterlogical00cairuoft/characterlogical00cairuoft.djvuIt is like a cushion you see. Push a cushion on one side and the other side pops out. The elderly lady will be obliged to cut down on her consumption of tea; she will be left wondering whether it was really good for her. Providential perhaps. Special interposition.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2013 5:40:21 GMT -5
What if I sell the elderly lady better value tea, Gerard?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2013 8:10:37 GMT -5
What if I sell the elderly lady better value tea, Gerard? Well if you do that you will have the opportunity to skate faster and further than any Welshman has done before. You may even find yourself in Celebrity Corner. www.sydneyicearena.com.au/
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Post by ahinton on Dec 8, 2013 12:18:26 GMT -5
What if I sell the elderly lady better value tea, Gerard? Do you mean "proper tea"?... Seriously, to get back to the thread topic (as best I can), might we not simply accept that there is such a thing as "property" (whether or not anyone happens to approve of the notion) whomsoever might own it and that, without the wholesale and permanent destruction thereof, it will inevitably remain intact indefinitely?
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Post by Gerard on Dec 8, 2013 20:08:20 GMT -5
. . . might we not simply accept that there is such a thing as "property" (whether or not anyone happens to approve of the notion) whomsoever might own it and that, without the wholesale and permanent destruction thereof, it will inevitably remain intact indefinitely? Well no we might not accept that. Ben Nevis is no one's property. The folk-song Brigg Fair is no one's property. The bed of the North Sea is no one's property. The village common is no one's property. The sunshine is no one's property. And when true socialism comes, there will no longer be property of any kind. Unimaginable as it may be to some, the whole concept of "ownership" will then be old hat. Persons of refinement do not need it. At this point I cannot do better than to quote what Wilde in his profound wisdom wrote upon the question: "Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But, for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor; and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient. "Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite true. The possession of private property is very often extremely demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying that property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that, at last, the Church has begun to say it. One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it ; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance. . . . "It may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their personality more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a single day's work for hire. They were relieved from poverty. They had an immense advantage. The question is whether it would be for the good of Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away. Let us suppose that it is taken away. What happens then to Individualism? How will it benefit? It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions Individualism will be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am not talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such poets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent and potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth, its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man's personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated offences against a man's property with far more severity than offences against his person, and property is still the test of complete citizenship. The industry necessary for the making of money is also very demoralising. In a community like ours, where property confers immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by overwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One's regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him in which, in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be - often is - at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance. "With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Read and inwardly digest!
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Post by ahinton on Dec 9, 2013 3:01:36 GMT -5
. . . might we not simply accept that there is such a thing as "property" (whether or not anyone happens to approve of the notion) whomsoever might own it and that, without the wholesale and permanent destruction thereof, it will inevitably remain intact indefinitely? Well no we might not accept that. Ben Nevis is no one's property. The folk-song Brigg Fair is no one's property. The bed of the North Sea is no one's property. The village common is no one's property. The sunshine is no one's property. And when true socialism comes, there will no longer be property of any kind. Unimaginable as it may be to some, the whole concept of "ownership" will then be old hat. Persons of refinement do not need it. Notwithstanding my immense respect and admiration for Wilde, his The Soul of Man under Socialism, which dates from 1890, does not have all the answers, despite its Utopian idealism and despite its addressing some worthy aspirations; let's concentrate for the moment, however, on what you wrote in 2013 rather than what he did almost a century and a quarter ago! I did not suggest that there were no exceptions to the rule about what constitutes "property". HOwever, a brief consideration of the examples that you give raises some legitimate questions. Who takes care of Ben Nevis and who pays for it to be taken care of? Almost all music the composers of which have been dead for more than 70 years is in the public domain, although publishers who have invested in their publications of it may well retain intellectual property rights in those publications. The bed of the North Sea has oil rigs on it and will soon have offshore wind farms as well; what right do you suppose that the corporations and governments who erect such things there have to install them there if the North Sea bed is supposedly no one's property? The sunshine is, of course, everyone's property rather than no one's, although those who have solar energy devices (property) on their homes and/or businesses (property) are able to derive more value from it (property) than those who don't. "When true socialism comes"? When's that going to be? There have been many attempts at it over the past centuries, almost none of them unopposed and none successful; that's not in itself to say that it could never happen, but its parlous and flawed history does make it look ever more unlikely. You write of what to you is presumably some kind of Utopia in which "there will no longer be property of any kind"; how will this come about? The land, buildings and their contents, transportation vehicles, intellectual property (i.e. literary, scientific, musical, &c., work that is still under copyright), plant and machinery and heaven alone knows what else will not just suddenly disappear, so were all its current owners to stand back and wash their hands of their ownerships thereof, who will thereafter take care of it all and with the benefit of whose money and other resources? "Persons of refinement" - whoever they are (and, once again, I ask who should decide who they are and on what grounds?) - need, like those "without refinement", to live and, for this, they need an income from some source, be it a business, employment, investments, state benefits (paid for out of taxes on the incomes that others derive from business) and, even were money to be abolished (as you appear to advocate), something would have to take its place in order that each individual would retain the means to survive and, hopefully, to do more than merely survive ( pace Wilde, indeed!). The kind of "socialism" that you appear to advocate would, however, result in everything suddenly coming to a permanent halt and never more going forward; that would run entirely counter to human nature and the desire to progress. Anyway, I'd thought that we were discussing problems at or with Qantas, about which I am unaware that Wilde ever pronounced!...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2013 6:50:07 GMT -5
Good morning to you all! I trust that all is well with all of you! If I may address both your questions directly, ahinton: What if I sell the elderly lady better value tea, Gerard? a. Do you mean "proper tea"?...I suppose that we have to define what we mean by "proper tea", and also what we mean by "better value tea". What could be more domestic, more unremarkable, more 'British', than a nice cup of tea? But you could ask that question the other way round and ask what could be 'less' British than a cup of tea, given that tea is made from plants grown in India, China or Africa, and is usually sweetened by sugar from the Caribbean. The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, considers it to be one of the extraordinary ironies of British national identity - or perhaps it says everything about our national identity - that the drink that has become the worldwide caricature of Britishness has nothing indigenous about it, but is the result of centuries of global trade and a complex imperial history. Behind the modern British cup of tea lie the high politics of Victorian Britain. The story of nineteenth-century empire, of mass production and mass consumption, the taming of a turbulent and drunken industrial working class, the re-shaping of agriculture across continents, the movement of millions of people . . . and a world-wide shipping industry. It's a lot to think about as you tuck into the cucumber sandwiches at the vicarage. In Britain, the most ubiquitous of all the luxuries of the Industrial Revolution was tea. In the British Museum is a tea set in the link below - three pieces of brownish-red pottery. A smallish teapot with a short straight spout, a milk jug and a sugar bowl - the trinity of afternoon tea. They were made - as we can read on their bases - at Wedgwood's Etruria factory in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in the heart of the Potteries. In the eighteenth century Wedgwood had made some of the most expensive ceramics in Britain, but this earthenware tea set shows that by the 1840s, when Wedgwood produced it, the company was aiming at a much wider market. This is quite clearly a mid-range tea set, of a sort that many quite modest British households were now able to afford. But this had not been the case for long. The British Museum - Early Victorian tea setAmong the upper classes, tea had been popular since before 1700. It received celebrity endorsement first from Charles II's queen, Catherine of Braganza, and then again from Queen Anne. It came from China, it was expensive and it was refreshingly bitter, drunk in tiny cups without milk or sugar. People kept their tea in locked tea caddies as if it were a drug, and for those who could afford it, it often was. In the 1750s Samuel Johnson confessed himself a happy addict: (' The Literary Magazine') Desire for the drink increased steadily in the eighteenth century. At some point early in the century people had started adding milk and sugar, transforming bitter refinement into sustaining sweetness. Consumption rocketed - tea supplies surged to meet the nation's growing appetite, and prices fell. Unlike coffee, which was seen as a masculine drink, with heavy overtones of all lads together, tea was specifically marketed as a respectable drink suitable for both sexes - and women were particularly targeted. Tea houses and tea gardens flourished in London, china tea sets became an essential part of a fashionable household, and less costly versions in pottery spread throughout society. There's one more point that needs to be made about our tea set. Although it's made of simple earthenware, it's been given something extra, because all three pieces have been decorated with lacy open-work silver, cut out by hand. This is not for a modest middle-class household - this is a tea set with serious aspirations. It's not just going to keep up with the Jones's, it's going to leave them far behind. As the eighteenth century went on, and tea got cheaper, the taste for it spread rapidly to the working classes. In 1809 a startled Swedish visitor to Britain noted: By 1900 every person in Britain was, on average, getting through a staggering three kilos of tea a year. The ruling classes had an interest in promoting tea-drinking among the industrial urban population, who were poor, vulnerable to disease, and thought to be given to disorderly drunkenness. Beer, port and gin had all become a significant part of the diet of men, women and even children, largely because alcohol as a mild antiseptic was much safer to drink than the unpurified city water. Religious leaders and temperance movements joined together to proclaim the merits of tea. A cup of sweet, milky tea made with boiled water was healthy, cheap, energy-giving - and it didn't make you drunk. So in that way it was also a powerful instrument of social control. Here's historian Celina Fox: In a remarkable re-branding of the British character, boisterous, rowdy beer was ousted as the defining national drink, and replaced by polite, respectable tea. Songs and poems celebrated tea's triumph over the demon drink: But our loving, tranquil cup of tea has a violent hinterland. To buy tea from the Chinese, British traders brought huge quantities of opium into the country, a practice that led to the two Opium Wars between Britain and China. We refer to these as the Opium Wars, but in fact they were just as much about tea. And the first Opium War broke out more-or-less at the same time as our teapot was leaving the Wedgwood factory. Traders began looking for other sources, and in the 1830s the British set up tea plantations around Calcutta. In order to encourage demand, tea from British India was exempted from import duty, and strong, dark Assam tea became the patriotic national "cuppa". As the century went on, further tea plantations were established in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and large numbers of Tamils moved from South India to Ceylon to work on them. The physical geography and the populations of both India and Sri Lanka were re-shaped by the insatiable British thirst for tea. Here's Monique Simmonds from Kew Gardens: If there was big money in growing tea, fortunes were also made in shipping it. The tea trade required huge numbers of large fast clippers, and when they docked in British harbours they met cargo vessels coming from the other side of the world, bringing sugar from the Caribbean. Getting sugar on to the British tea table had, until recently, also had a darker side. The first African slaves in the Americas worked on sugar plantations, the start of the long and terrible triangular trade that carried European goods to Africa, African slaves to the Americas, and slave-produced sugar to Europe. After a long campaign, which involved many of the same people who supported temperance movements, slavery in the British West Indies had been abolished. But there was still a great deal of slave sugar around - Cuba was a massive producer - and it was of course cheaper than the sugar produced on free plantations. In the 1840s, the ethics of sugar were hot politics. The most peaceful part of our tea set is of course the milk jug. But it too is part of a huge social and economic transformation. Until the 1830s, for urban-dwellers to have milk, cows had to live in the city - it's an aspect of nineteenth-century life we're barely aware of now. But suburban railways changed all that. Thanks to them, the cows could leave town. The British Museum's tea set is in fact a three-piece social history of nineteenth-century Britain. And it's a lens through which we can look at a large part of the history of the world. Here's historian Linda Colley: BBC - A History of the World in 100 objects - Early Victorian tea setI would only add to what Neil MacGregor says that what is considered proper tea by ahinton may be considered improper tea by Sydney. For example, I always drink my tea without milk and sugar, although I quite like a variety of different teas from around the world, occasionally blended together as in English breakfast tea, which I am drinking now. As for better value tea, well, I suppose that it all depends upon what we value in our tea. I would say that it is ultimately the taste of the tea, although the cup or mug in which it is drunk is also of considerable interest. b. Seriously, to get back to the thread topic (as best I can), might we not simply accept that there is such a thing as "property" (whether or not anyone happens to approve of the notion) whomsoever might own it and that, without the wholesale and permanent destruction thereof, it will inevitably remain intact indefinitely? Well, many Marxists argue that property is theft! As a scientist, I would make the observation that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were nomads, and so, for them, property did not exist, at least not in the terms we would seek to define it. Some tribes are still hunter-gatherers, both in Australia and southern Africa, for example, and for them, property prevents them from hunting and gathering where they choose to do so. In evolutionary terms, therefore, it is possible to argue that property is theft. Of course, when humanity began to farm ten thousand years ago, ownership of land became important, although who precisely should own what property is an interesting question. I would only comment that the collective ownership of property, as practised by many communist societies over the course of the twentieth century, turned out to be something of a disappointment. On topic, therefore, is the real problem with Qantas the capitalist system in which it operates? As a capitalist myself, I would not argue that private is good and public is bad. Some of the best transportation systems in the world are publicly owned, and it seems to me that private enterprise requires a common public infrastructure if it is to work effectively. Moreover, I was publicly educated, and count myself fortunate to have been so well educated. Perhaps the problem with Qantas is not whether it is privately or publicly owned, but far more practically how to get to and from Australia?
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Post by ahinton on Dec 9, 2013 7:15:11 GMT -5
Good morning to you all! I trust that all is well with all of you! If I may address both your questions directly, ahinton: a. Do you mean "proper tea"?... I suppose that we have to define what we mean by "proper tea", and also what we mean by "better value tea". It was merely intended to be a pun; "proper tea" / "property", as in!... usually sweetened by sugar from the Caribbean Yuck! God forbid! b. Seriously, to get back to the thread topic (as best I can), might we not simply accept that there is such a thing as "property" (whether or not anyone happens to approve of the notion) whomsoever might own it and that, without the wholesale and permanent destruction thereof, it will inevitably remain intact indefinitely? Well, many Marxists argue that property is theft! I know that some do, but how can it be? Property itself exists in its own right and is owned by people, companies, governments, &c.; the theft only arises when someone steals any that belong to someone else. As a scientist, I would make the observation that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were nomads, and so, for them, property did not exist, at least not in the terms we would seek to define it. Some tribes are still hunter-gatherers, both in Australia and southern Africa, for example, and for them, property prevents them from hunting and gathering where they choose to do so. But they merely hunted and gathered in order to continue their existence, so the need for personal, still less corporate, property hardly arose. Times have changed since then! In evolutionary terms, therefore, it is possible to argue that property is theft. Once again, it isn't. Theft occurs when property is misappropriated against the will and/or without the permission of its owners by theives who then seek to possess it as though it was rightfully theirs in the first place. Of course, when humanity began to farm ten thousand years ago, ownership of land became important, although who precisely should own what property is an interesting question. I would only comment that the collective ownership of property, as practised by many communist societies over the course of the twentieth century, turned out to be something of a disappointment. That's indeed true., but even this does not alter the fact that collectively owned property is still property and is owned by whoever it may be that comprises such collectives. On topic, therefore, is the real problem with Qantas the capitalist system in which it operates? Were that true, it would surely apply more or less equally to any other airline, state owned or otherwise. As a capitalist myself, I would not argue that private is good and public is bad. Some of the best transportation systems in the world are publicly owned, and it seems to me that private enterprise requires a common public infrastructure if it is to work effectively. Moreover, I was publicly educated, and count myself fortunate to have been so well educated. Perhaps the problem with Qantas is not whether it is privately or publicly owned, but far more practically how to get to and from Australia? I would not argue that private is good and public is bad either but, as has been clarified above, that's of little direct consequence in terms of the existence of property and its owners, be they states, private corporations, individuals, &c. On the other hand, I could not agree with the premise that "the problem with Qantas is not whether it is privately or publicly owned, but far more practically how to get to and from Australia", even if for no other or better reason than that Qantas' schedule includes domestic (i.e. within Australia) as well as international flights...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2013 7:52:13 GMT -5
Out of interest, ahinton, what have the problems of Qantas got to do with its domestic flights? Writing in ' The Australian', Julian Swallows reports that Jetstar is to reduce international flights from Darwin in the wake of Qantas budget cuts. Jetstar is stopping flights from Darwin to Manila and Tokyo and cutting other domestic and international services as part of an overhaul of its Top End flights. Like many national carriers, Qantas faces increasing international capacity and competition from lower cost entrants into the travel market, hence the need to cut costs in order to compete. The budget carrier said it will relocate three Airbus A320 aircraft to Adelaide and reduce the number of weekly services in and out of Darwin from 54 to 49 a week in response to what it said was "increased capacity and competition", particularly on international routes. Julian concludes thus: Jetstar is therefore focusing more on domestic rather than international flights, where there is more money to be made. Surely the real problem with Qantas is therefore international rather than domestic, ahinton?
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Post by ahinton on Dec 9, 2013 8:15:30 GMT -5
Out of interest, ahinton, what have the problems of Qantas got to do with its domestic flights? Writing in ' The Australian', Julian Swallows reports that Jetstar is to reduce international flights from Darwin in the wake of Qantas budget cuts. Jetstar is stopping flights from Darwin to Manila and Tokyo and cutting other domestic and international services as part of an overhaul of its Top End flights. Like many national carriers, Qantas faces increasing international capacity and competition from lower cost entrants into the travel market, hence the need to cut costs in order to compete. The budget carrier said it will relocate three Airbus A320 aircraft to Adelaide and reduce the number of weekly services in and out of Darwin from 54 to 49 a week in response to what it said was "increased capacity and competition", particularly on international routes. Julian concludes thus: Surely the real problem with Qantas is international rather than domestic, ahinton? I did not say what Qantas's problems are, nor do I claim to know sufficient on that subject to pronounce upon it; my reference to its domestic flights was purely in response to your question "Perhaps the problem with Qantas is not whether it is privately or publicly owned, but far more practically how to get to and from Australia?", by which you mean international flights only and, in any case, I took the substance of your question to identify a possible comparison and/or contrast between the nature of Qantas's ownership (which is a matter for Qantas alone) on the one hand and how to get to and from Australia on the other (which is not).
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2013 8:23:25 GMT -5
Do you not see a problem at all with Qantas then, ahinton?
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