Gaunty, that revolting little toad TW deleted a couple of my posts for reasons best known to himself, but jeez! There is a South Park sooooperstar who is wrecking a national icon and 5000 blameless people are losing their beliefs and livelihoods. I think worrying about a few words here or there is frankly, neither here nor there! Although the posts of mine he deleted are a totally different matter
More serious matters:
I naively had made a lot of money and bought a dead business. It was a business I knew nothing about and required an enormous amount of skill to make work.
Not surprisingly I nearly went broke (through ego mainly) but 'I' resurrected it and I will share with you how I did it.
This was a high end thing - much like QF. If you got customers you could charge the earth, but they had to be satisfied they got value for money when they spent. Using QF as an example I poured literally millions into tarting up the Lounges and making sure the carpets on the aero bridges gave everyone a nice fuzzy feeling inside. The problem was I knew F@@k all about aeroplanes. But what I knew about - my cosseted 1st class understanding of airlines - I did to the best of my ability.
Unfortunately, my customers and the national press didn't care about room renovations and nice carpets, they cared about getting to where they wanted to go on my aeroplanes, safely whilst also enjoying a great experience on board. The point is, all the renovating work was irrelevant if I couldn't make the primary experience (getting from A-B as they believed they had paid for) good enough to mix it with the competition!
The one thing I did that was smart (that just before I went bankrupt)was to shut the thing down and offer support (financial and otherwise) to someone who actually knew about airlines from outside the cosseted world of 1st Class Lounges.
By the grace of god (and I am not religious in any way) I had a Steve Purvinas type character approach me who couldn't believe his luck in finding someone like me who wanted to pour (at that stage a little ) money into his dream.
I know anyone reading this would find it very hard to believe, but it actually turned out that Steve knew what he was doing and not only rescued a fairly famous brand but also created a business that people who paid the real dollars were prepared to believe in again. All it took was a relative (to the VAST amounts I lost) pittance in financial support, but considerable moral support ('Mate - I won't let you fail - we are in this together') to get it back on the road.
And that story is why that revolting imbecile Joyce and equally incompetent Clifford make me now physically wretch when I see them.
Even I know I could do a waaaay better job than they, and I reckon I could do it inside 6 months. And I'd be prepared to do it for free. I'm not joking, I would guarantee results (real ones) in that time frame.
They are absolutely, totally, incomparably incompetent and worse, they have your money, livelihoods and the taxpayers money to throw away. And after yet another 'grilling' by those interviewing experts (our learned Senators - whose skills in the field are what, exactly?) can someone explain to me why they will not just continue throwing money away like it's not theirs? Because that is exactly what they are doing! They have nothing to lose - their bonuses will keep increasing because it is always the dollars fault, or staff or the carbon tax.
To run any business, you need skin in the game or the pain is someone else's. Why are these idiots allowed to continue??
One other great comment I will share with you that came from 'my' Steve Purvinas:
'I learnt nothing about business making $80k per week, it was when I grossed 15k with costs at 25k that I learnt the most'
The man that said that to me just had his 30th birthday. I would put him in charge of Qantas any day over the total clowns that are wrecking the place now.
FWIW I would be in favour of all staff everywhere downing tools until anyone from divisional/operational management up resigned. This is a train wreck that will go on until it hits something. The guys in charge have nothing to lose so it will go on and on and on and on and on and it will be everyone else's fault except their own.....
I could not be more disgusted.