Paul Reynolds takes the money and runs

41 comments on “Paul Reynolds takes the money and runs ”

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1. mike e 1

   4 July 2012 at 11:44 am

   Capitalism and Crony-ism are inseparable under this Govt.
2. Kevin Welsh 2

   4 July 2012 at 12:07 pm

   And after a six month extended break to recharge the corporate batteries, he will re-appear at his next corporate assignment earning twice as much.
3. Jim in Tokyo 3

   4 July 2012 at 12:53 pm

   Actually he ‘earned’ this money by effectively greasing the back-room machinations which ultimately saw the National government directly transfer $929m of taxpayer money to Chorus in a blatant end-around which made a bit of a mockery of the Government’s much vaunted ‘tender’ process.

   http://www.telecom-media.co.nz/releases_detail.asp?id=3775&page=1&pagesize=10
   • MrSmith 3.1

     4 July 2012 at 8:43 pm

     Totally agree Jim, his tenure will be remembered as re-establishing telecom as the monopoly they once were, with the help of tax payers money and steven joyce, monopoly high speed internet coming to a town near you, profits going to Nationals mates.
4. Fortran 4

   4 July 2012 at 1:29 pm

   When Labour sold off Telecom I bought shares in the private company.
   At the time of sale it took three weeks to get a phone changed.
   As a part owner in the company I am satisfied with the progress and dividend that Telecom have provided, and the CEO’s remuneration
   • quartz 4.1

     4 July 2012 at 1:39 pm

     As a part owner

     Lolz. Look at the big wheeler dealer.
   • DH 4.2

     4 July 2012 at 1:57 pm

     “At the time of sale it took three weeks to get a phone changed.”

     Utterly false and a very common bad memory from pundits of asset sales. Connection times were down to days, often same day, when Telecom was sold and they did not improve noticeably after the sale.
     • Rob 4.2.1

       4 July 2012 at 2:20 pm

       The ‘service’ that was provided by the old Govt owned Telecom was terrible.  Completely reactive, demeaning and bullying.  Faults calls were treated with derision and ‘customers’ were made to feel like idiots.

       This is exactly the behaviour that gets entrenched in a non-audited, fully protected, un-measured, lazy environment. 
       • DH 4.2.1.1

         4 July 2012 at 2:34 pm

         Yet another with a bad memory. Telecom was a brand new company created as an SOE in 1987 and sold in 1990. When it was set up as a standalone telecommunications company the Govt set targets it had to meet, notable of which was connection times. They used to print regular reports on Telecom’s performance in the media and it is a fact that connection times were vastly reduced after it was made into an SOE. Service levels did not improve significantly after it was sold.

         It’s also well known that the new digital exchanges had the biggest influence on connection times and they were installed when Telecom was owned by the Govt.
         • Draco T Bastard 4.2.1.1.1

           4 July 2012 at 4:48 pm

           …and it is a fact that connection times were vastly reduced after it was made into an SOE.

           There was some minor reorganisation but those connection times would have come down no matter what. The change from the old analogue to digital exchanges (started in the 1980s) would have seen to that.

           What Rob and Fortran fail to realise is that if we’d kept Telecom as a state service the services supplied would a) be cheaper now that what they are, b) we’d most likely have fibre to the cabinets already (again, started installing that in the 1980s, the private owners started taking it out and replacing with copper in the 2000s), and c) we wouldn’t now have to be paying billions extra in taxpayer $$$ to get that fibre to the home installed.

           The sale of Telecom is the perfect example of the dead weight loss of profit – and Fortran is one of the bludgers hanging around our neck.
           • Richard Christie 4.2.1.1.1.1

             5 July 2012 at 12:05 am

             Yep, most service improvements were due to the new digital exchange conversion, well underway before it became a SOE.
             Richard Preeble was probably the loudest of the liars stating improvements were due privatisation etc.
             • DH …

               5 July 2012 at 9:41 am

               Hearing the old trope about slow connection times & bad service must be infuriating to those who worked for Telecom & its predecessor in the ’80s. It’s such a blatant falsehood that’s often trotted out by people in favour of privatisation, ever trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
     • McFlock 4.2.2

       4 July 2012 at 2:24 pm

       didn’t the NZ govt invest millions of dollars into telecom upgrades just prior to the sale (dim memory – was in school at the time)?
              
       Oh,  and the three week thing is down from the six months that was prebble’s wet dream 15 or 20 years ago. Nice to see a tory catechism of faith become a pale shadow of its former self.
            
       One of these days the tory mind might even acknowledge reality – but then they wouldn’t be tories…
            
        
       • Kotahi Tane Huna 4.2.2.1

         4 July 2012 at 2:27 pm

         “…but then they wouldn’t be tories…”

         Sad but true. lol
         • Rob 4.2.2.1.1

           4 July 2012 at 2:45 pm

           Look,   carry on trying to turn the clock back and reviewing it like an endless summer evening.  But it was shit.  I had mates that worked for them and they even laughed about it.  Just like that other massive dung heap the Ministry of Works. 

           What’s sad but true is that you like it. 
           • DH 4.2.2.1.1.1

             4 July 2012 at 2:58 pm

             What’s sad is the senile rambling of people who lost about five years of their memory. The old Post Office in the ’70s was a bit of a shocker for service but Telecom as an SOE sure wasn’t. It’s all recorded history, the reports on Telecom’s service levels can be found in newspaper archives.
             • McFlock …

               4 July 2012 at 3:37 pm

               Exactly – when the government ran a post office as a job-sink to keep unemployment low, service levels were down. When the government decided to run NZPost and Telecom as “enterprises”, they did very well.
                         
               Big surprise: when service isn’t as much of a priority as the general social good, service takes a hit. When profit takes a priority, the social good takes a hit. 
                          
               Oh, and two letters to illustrate the service efficiency of the private sector: “XT”. 
               • Rob …

                 4 July 2012 at 4:14 pm

                 Telecom has had some shockers , I dont use them at home and at work , but here is a few letters following your theme –  Vodafone, 2 Degress, Orcon and a whole host other service centric competitors.

                 What the change did is finally put the purchaser at the centre of their business.
                 • Draco T Bastard …

                   4 July 2012 at 4:54 pm

                   Wrong, the populace was always at the centre of the business.
                 • McFlock …

                   4 July 2012 at 5:36 pm

                   They’ve all had outages, poor service or billing issues. And our rates are all too high for crap service.
                                
                   The change to SOE changed the emphasis of the sector. From a wider social focus to a narrow balance-sheet focus. As you would expect if an efficient command structure goes from saying “consider the wider social costs” to saying “make a profit”.
                      
                   Asset sales served only to put profits in the hands of the already rich, rather than all taxpayers. 
                   • Colonial Viper …

                     4 July 2012 at 10:47 pm

                     Economic infrastructure such as telecoms, banking, power and water need to be publicly owned.

                     Instead of having profits from them taken off our citizens and shipped offshore to enrich foreign shareholders.
           • Draco T Bastard 4.2.2.1.1.2

             4 July 2012 at 4:52 pm

             I did work for them and we never laughed about it. We got stuck in providing the best service we could with the resources we had. The biggest problem we had was simple physical limitations – you can’t get a phone connected when there isn’t cable to the home.
           • Kotahi Tane Huna 4.2.2.1.1.3

             4 July 2012 at 4:55 pm

             Dream on Rob. As DH points out, you are either deceitful or deceived, and those are the only two categories of tory.
           • Half Crown Millionare 4.2.2.1.1.4

             4 July 2012 at 5:48 pm

             “Just like that other massive dung heap the Ministry of Works.”

             Yeah,

             You don’t know what you are talking about mate. I suggest you look up the building of the Clyde dam. One almighty fuckup by private contractors aided by, dare I say it, right wing fuckwits again, Muldoon and Bill (carlos days) Birch. . And how the then MOW came to the rescue
             This dam was part of the Think Big Fiasco, another right wing scheme to send New Zealand bankrupt.
             • Descendant Of Smith …

               5 July 2012 at 6:33 am

               Anmd several truckies I know are quite open about the fact that MOW used thicker tar / bitumen on the roads so maintenance was less and roads didn’t cut up as much.

               They get pissed off being blamed for the road damage that occurscause the private contractors thin it down so they have ongoing repair work and continuing profit.

               Desert Road is another example of how it was open much more in winter when MOW had the responsibility – and more cheaply as well.
   • Herodotus 4.3

     4 July 2012 at 8:41 pm

     You were lucky. In a development I am associated with. Chorus/Telecom signed off that the telecom reticulation HAD taken place 9 months later it was found out that only ducts were installed and that no hardware had ever been installed, even though Telecom had signed off on the work it still took another 3 months for the cables to be installed. Telecoms offer was for free cell phone calls for outward bound calls only, callers still had to pay to call in.
   • mike e 4.4

     4 July 2012 at 10:34 pm

     Fartrain that was a deliberate ploy by the right wing to undermine Govt ownership..
     Before it was split it took as little as ten minutes in some case to get connected.
     Prices were very reasonable .
     after it was split from the post office $ 2 billion was borrowed to mainly up grade the rural lines network then teelcon was sold for 4 billion .Speculators had a feilday for years after this until their monopoly was broken.
     The first owners gouged prices( monopoly) the second owners gouged then the recent share holders lost buckets because telcon had been a monopoly so long it couldn’t do competition.
     Now Nactional has put them back in a monopoly situation again with HSB.
   • mike e 4.5

     7 July 2012 at 11:22 am

     Fatrain I’ve had shares in telecon as well when they were a monopoly how ever my business phone bills cost more than the profits I made out of the shares. Since David Cunliffe has broken the monopoly my ph bills have shrunk to a fraction of what they were.
     But I wisely got rid of my Telcon shares.
5. captain hook 5

   4 July 2012 at 2:28 pm

   hey he is a rugged individualist and a risk taker.
   yeah right.
6. tsmithfield 6

   4 July 2012 at 3:10 pm

   At least now you can change your subscription to other providers if you don’t like the amount Telecom pays its execs. Couldn’t do that when it was publicly owned.
   • McFlock 6.1

     4 July 2012 at 3:39 pm

     Big effect that has.
     • Jim in Tokyo 6.1.1

       4 July 2012 at 7:02 pm

       The problem is, that at least until the demerger in December 2011, with the exception of TelstraClear’s HFC network in Wellington, Christchurch and Kapiti the ‘competition’ has actually mostly just been reselling Telecom Wholesale services for a slim margin. And even if you used a provider who had jumped though the hoops to install their own ADSL+ gear into a (rented) space in a Chorus owned cabinet or exchange, then Telecom Wholesale still owned and charged for the back-haul.

       This situation was supposed to improve with the Chorus demerger, but since Joyce decided to give Chorus 70% of the UFB rollout then we seem to be forever locked into trying to regulate pricing on a monopoly infrastructure provider.

       And lets not forget that after all is said and done, regardless of your provider, all your international data still has to travel over Southern Cross Cable Networks, which while incorporated in Bermuda for tax purposes, is in fact 50% owned by… you guessed it … Telecom.
     • Draco T Bastard 6.1.2

       4 July 2012 at 7:45 pm

       Actually, it does have an effect – massive increase in costs due to duplication of the bureaucracy and physical plant. Also, we’re now losing more than we were before the mid 1980s reforms due to the dead weight loss of profit also being massively duplicated.
   • felix 6.2

     4 July 2012 at 6:36 pm

     Meh. I’d prefer a bit of democratic accountability, thanks.
   • mike e 6.3

     7 July 2012 at 11:32 am

     Tsm the cost of my phone bills when the govt owned the ph company were a fraction of what they were under private monopoly hands.that was right up til 2007.
     The Silly Monetarist.You may have been able to change companies to Clear only initially but the value and service was not any better. because they had to lease Telecon lines and Telecon being a private Monopoly gouged NZ plenty.
     Thanks to Steven Joyce and Shonkey their at it again by creating a duopoly with UFB we will have to wait for another Labour Govt to break this Duopoly that National have created.
7. Blue 7

   4 July 2012 at 4:05 pm

   Who cares what a private company pays its staff. If you’re unhappy, use another provider. Go and make a moral stand.
   • Colonial Viper 7.1

     4 July 2012 at 8:31 pm

     And the strongest moral stand is to nationalise the company and get rid of corporate freeloaders.

     Who cares what a private company pays its staff.

     I fucking care. We don’t need this corporate greed in NZ. 91% income tax on all income more than 10x the median wage thanks.
     • mike e 7.1.1

       5 July 2012 at 12:29 am

       Corporates are just operating a pyramid scheme eventually scamming all the money and power to the 1% .The small time enablers are the reasonably well off just play along until they slide down the ladder and are ripped off by those they defend.
     • BR 7.1.2

       7 July 2012 at 11:01 am

       You can “fucking care” all you like.

       It is none of your business how much a private individual or group of individuals chooses to pay another, or for what reason.

       End of story.

       Bill.
       • mike e 7.1.2.1

         7 July 2012 at 11:12 am

         Bullshit Reasoner.So its all right for Private companies to monopolize the market thats whats happening in the world today and use any under handed trick they can get away with.
         Lie more(LIBOR)
         insider trading pyramid schemes ponzi schemes black mail and bribery and stalking.
         Murdoch
         Madoff’S
         Diamond
         GSK
         Lehman BrO’s
         Merrill Lynch
         BOA
         AIG
         Goldman Sachs
         Morgan Stanley
         etc.
         etc.
         etc.
   • mike e 7.2

     7 July 2012 at 11:50 am

     Blue as a former shareholder. Lucky I am no longer one.On Reynolds watch( not the Gold one he received) Shares in Telecon halved in value profits halved in value from this guy who was on 2 and a half times the salary of the previous CEO Plus a very generous share package.
     Telecon’s service has been atrocious Filipino call centres xt outing because of underinvestment.
     I gave them a wide birth because my ph bills were heading up to $700 per month I changed to vodafone my bills went down to $120 a month same usage.
     Telecon has been a disaster for NZ.
     Now Joyce is handing them UFB on a plate.

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