This is neither really news or particularly surprising. The News behemoth went through a restructure recently which pushed all its low performing assets into a different vehicle. Basically Rupert is in love with newspapers and he continues to support them even though the ROI is not there. When he leaves expect the papers to disappear as well.

And I am not in Europe.

Are you serious? This is the stupidest most arrogant statement I have read in a long time. If you are too myopic to see that things can be learnt from countries outside of the USA then there is no helping you. There are many many things that I look at in the USA and say "I cannot believe they do that, it's barbaric" it doesn't however mean I decide nothing can be learnt from there.

The Universal Service Principal is hardly a common concept yet there is the capability of other countries to allow competition both at an infrastructure and access level. I think you will also find that there is absolutely no USP for internet access above an abysmally low level.

More fundamentally though I do not understand why you feel there should be no competition at a municipal level. A township has no requirement, legally or morally, to support a different township through subsidisation. And that is exactly what you are arguing by saying the cash cows need to exist to fund other areas. If a local government feels that its population is being inadequately served then it actually HAS the moral imperative to fix that if it can. Now if it invests in infrastructure which it then operates itself or sells to a private entity and as a result improves the standards for its constituents it has done EXACTLY what it exists to do.

The fact that there is corruption in any organisation, or that the decision on what to build may not have been your choice is a completely different argument all together.

I also don't really understand the thought process as to how it would be a barrier to infrastructure. I kinda thought a major part of a governments role was to build infrastructure the private sector wasn't. If there is a push for a municipal level rollout then the private sector has failed in that case. Surely the logical thing is for the municipal to roll out the fibre and then, once in place, sell it to the private sector. That way you get your infrastructure, you get a ROI, you get competition for services and government stays out of providing random services.

In principal there is nothing wrong with a PPP (public, private, partnership) structure to build infrastructure. It is a way for a government to get infrastructure built that it otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. But the devil is in the detail. Why would there be a government guarantee of profitability is a big question. Right to toll is a pretty standard option for a long period of time 20 - 50 years. But if you screw up your traffic forecasts or you go over budget on the build well that is your problem, not the Governments. If you want to see a pretty spectacular example of that in Australia have a look at the North South Bypass Tunnel (Clem 7) which went bankrupt 11 months after the tunnel opened because traffic was only 30% of the projected flow.

Also if they are done well the ownership rights should return to the government after a period of time. At that stage the government can decide if they want to sell that asset for a cash injection or remove the toll. Usually they choose to resell the tolling rights but I have seen them remove tolls as well.

Not to mention that as soon as you host data external to your location you add latency and a failure point.

I run my own business from home where the internet is critical. I literally have to stop working if it goes offline. Now I have redundant internet connections because of that but if they turned those off it would be very easy for me to prove substantial losses.

Berlin taxis are only available if you call one to pick you up. They will do drive-by pickup but the other public transport is that good in Berlin that the taxi business struggle so they basically don't circle the city anymore.

Japan is another country where taxis are great. I don't know what make of car they are (they seem to be custom) they have a mechanised arm which opens and closes the rear left door for you to get in and out of and all the drivers wear immaculate pressed uniforms. Taxis in Japan are everywhere as well you just flag them down or head to one of the million taxi ranks.

But that is exactly what is different between Australia, Europe, and the US. In Berlin most of the taxi's are recent model Mercedes, usually E classes and are in great condition. In Australia they are either Falcons, Commodores or Aurions with Prius being used inside the higher density city circle. These are also (generally speaking) in good condition. This is BECAUSE the market is highly regulated.

However if you read about Berlin taxis there is a really low demand for them because of how good other public transport is. To the point that taxis don't circulate around Berlin to do pickups - they are purely a call and we come service.

Taxis in Berlin are small fry business compared to say LA or New York. The other component is that European governments are more concerned with individual safety that the US government is. From the US side you can argue that that makes them interfering nanny states. From the European perspective the US government is criminally reckless. The German government sees regulating taxi services as a safety issue ergo it is regulated.

I think you are wrong in this case, particularly as the case is in Germany. In the US getting into a cab is pretty horrific experience at the best of times, my experience has been several white knuckle drives where I have actually said to the driver I will tip him if he slows down, or taxis that simply aren't clean.

In Germany my experience has been taxis arriving on time, driven well and immaculately clean. Having legislated taxi services can mean that your drivers are vetted to a higher level (ie police checked & driver skills checked) than a decentralised system can ever be.

If the whole project was dependant on the body they send in to space then they had bigger problems and they didn't have a space program at all. What they had was a person they put on a russian space ship and then FTA stuck in front of people to say what it was like.

If that is the case and the program was a program of 1 person then why would she have stayed? No development, nothing interesting, no reason to be there.

You had a COMPLETELY different experience to me in Paris. I have been there 3-4 times now and love it and the places you can find tucked into small corners. There are restaurants everywhere and there was always someone nearby who would speak English to me if I needed help.

As for restaurants did you try walking from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triomphe? There are a gazzilion on that strip alone. And Paris is the only city I can think of where you seriously need to check out the cemeteries. Particularly the catacombs.

Not sure if I would go as far as saying the best roads. They have fantastic main highways but the roads get pretty rough when you are in the far north or the east and not on a main highway. I drove from Bremen in the north to Frankfurt on backroads 3 years ago and there were a few roads where they weren't wide enough for cars to pass each other (going in opposite directions.)