Kap - may I commend to you the oft-proffered advice to me from amos2 "...have a Bex and a good lie-down", you were obviously so incensed by my post that you failed to read it properly. What I said was that the '89ers did not cause the downfall of AN, with which you appear to agree, then you proceed to denigrate my non-existent business capabilities. How the two correlate escapes me, but your tortured reasoning somehow manages to marry them. My point in posting was to emphasise that, while the dispute caused untold financial and experience losses to the company, the demise was a function of appalling mis-management by successive owners hell-bent on looking after their own interests rather than those of the company they were supposed to be protecting.
As for "...suffering of the Ansett staff.......shoulders of those who caused it", I agree, and all you need is a mirror to see one of those who put the company in the position initially by your outrageous and unsustainable demands. While not being responsible for the eventual downfall, the '89ers did play a major part in exacerbating the problems the company faced.
There is no prospect, nor was there ever, of my starting a business, and the behaviour of people like yourself in pursuit of an unjustified and unsustainable claim convinces me that the necessity of emplying people such as yourself would preclude the possibility. Self-interest was not the motivation of ONLY Abeles/Murdoch, et al, your people showed more than a modicum of it in your approach to "negotiation".
ACMS - "...only people like us who went through the debacle have some idea"!! Yeah, right! Had you been somewhat more willing to look down from your ivory tower, you'd have seen the rest of us trying to keep the company together. Yes, you got "it" collectively stuck to you and, you may be surprised to read, most of us were almost as appalled as were you, but I'm afraid that you asked for it. Why you, in the form of the AFAP, couldn't accept what was staring you in the face, fall back, re-group and try again later will never cease to amaze me. I can only ascribe it to an unfounded belief in your collective unassailability. Well, I'm sorry, truly sorry, but to take on the power of a government determined to seize the opportunity to grab the chance to sort out a union once and for all had to be a monumental stupidity. What really galls is that you, collectively, handed the weapon to them on a plate, then had to retreat from the blows from your own, useless, weapon!
Over to you, Kap, et al, for the right of reply, my helmet is firmly secured!
Kind regards,
TheNightOwl.
