Overpriced dial-up - the only way forward

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Just spoke to Lenny Saith and told him to put the brakes on the FastForward programme. Also left a voice mail for Sam Martin suggesting that TSTT hold off on those broadband speed increases they’ve been proposing. Saith said it was a done deal: all he had to do was have his IT people unblock certain ports in the Ministry firewall so as to allow employees access to Facebook and MSN Messenger once more, and productivity would automatically plummet. I’m hoping Martin tells me those speed increases are just one of the standard carrots TSTT dangles periodically in front of consumers - this one to prevent them from Flow-ing away (hehehe). (Note to self: call Flow too).

Why the sudden urgency about keeping local internet access at connection speeds currently enjoyed only by peasants in remote parts of rural Africa? I intimated earlier that I think the Internet can be a dangerous influence, especially in small societies like ours. Like gambling, the Internet destroys the fabric of family life, as people spend unhealthy amounts of time in front of the computer screen interacting with virtual “friends”, and men’s attentions are drawn away from their spouses and significant others and into illusory relationships with tawdry porn actresses (and in a few cases I’ve heard of, tawdry porn actors). I also hear that certain web sites emit a form of radiation that causes cancer. But the worse effect, by far, of the Internet is the devastating effect of this constant exposure to foreign ideas and values on this country’s already threadbare social fabric.

The wake-up call for me was the blog post pictured above, which was evidently written by some foreign election finance wonk with no life and zero understanding of how this country works. I’ll admit that Christine S is partly to blame for that dotish line about the finances being “separated out” (Note to self: arrange for closer monitoring of Christine S’s interactions with press), but imagine if locals on fast broadband connections find this site and start pushing - God forbid - for campaign finance reform? And what is this IDEA database? Can locals access it? Can we arrange for them not to access it? Should I seek Hu Jintao’s advice on the matter?

Further research led me to this site and this site, which fill me with even greater alarm. While it is very interesting to learn that Halle Berry donated US$2,300 to Barack Obama, people need to understand that Ms. Berry is a citizen of a large, wealthy country where the populace can deal maturely with this kind of data; not a tiny, post-colonial state riven by social and ethnic strife fomented by the likes of the UNC and COP. Put that kind of information within reach of the some of the godless characters running around out there and their first reaction would be to lock either Ms. Berry’s neck, Mr. Obama’s neck, or both — which is one of the many sad legacies of the UNC years and the terrible neglect of the East-West Corridor citizenry during that period whose effects the PNM has been working so hard to reverse. Donors should be safeguarded as well from the scrutiny of the Inland Revenue Service and the VAT office, who are likely to draw inaccurate conclusions from the data provided by web sites of this ilk.

At the end of the day, overpriced dial-up access is the only way forward.

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Filed under Written by Patrick