Welcome to Chinatown

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

These lines were famously uttered at the conclusion of the 1974 noir film Chinatown.

Directed at the film's protagonist, they are the only solace private inspector Jake Gittes gets from his associates as he watches the death of a beautiful woman who played him and yet with whom he might have been in love.

They are a brutal reminder that mere feelings are no match for the vastly corrupt and conspiratorial system that Gittes finds himself enmeshed in.

Thus I find them appropriate as I begin what will become a journal of these troubled and blackhearted times in Australian telecommunications.

A time of secret government briefings, courtroom showdowns, absurdly grandiose postering and dodgy backroom deals. A time when nobody can be entirely sure if they're getting what they paid for ... or even what their service level agreement was in the first place.