That’s the only conclusion we can draw from the fact that the publisher of the magazine sent us an email a couple of weeks ago, informing us that she had had “a very negative response from Telstra re the speaking engagement for seniors festival”. When we rang her, she informed us that “Telstra isn’t entirely comfortable with having you speak.”

Telstra’s reaction was very much on the mind of the publisher, because it was the sponsor of the event.
We can understand why we’re possibly not Telstra’s favourite column. There are those articles we’ve written recently informing our readers of ways to cut their Telstra MobileNet bills by switching to the Next G network’s capped plans, and our instructive pieces on using Voice over IP technology substantially to prune Telstra’s landline call charges.

We’ve also been guilty of suggesting, from time to time, that Telstra Big Pond charges are a bit steep, what with charging for uploads as well as downloads. And now and again we’ve criticised their billing and customer service.
If we are to believe the publisher, however, those articles had nothing to do with her decision to drop us as a speaker. She was concerned instead, not for Telstra, but for sensitive little us.

She’d been shocked by a single paragraph we’d written on our blog, which linked to an opinion piece in this newspaper by the founder of a media and technology consultancy, Mark Pesce, at tinyurl.com/2zrf6q
Pesce had declared, under the heading “Why We All Hate Telstra”, that he, and the entire Australian Internet industry lacked love for the muscular corporation. Bleeding Edge simply noted, in our one-paragraph, throw-away line, that “apparently Telstra hasn't been able to get away with overcharging its customers, repeatedly denying them services and innovation, bullying them and its competition and then - God help us! - whingeing like a spoiled business brat when it looks like it can't get its way”. It still seems accurate to us as we write this column, with Telstra suing the Government over its failure to win a rural broadband contract which the evidence of Telstra’s internal correspondence seems to suggest it actually didn’t want.

The publisher informed us, having read this inflammatory paragraph, that “It is entirely unreasonable for you to be expected to change your mind, or bury your professional opinion, and share a stage with Telstra personnel who will be highlighting their product.”

How wrong she was. Although we had no idea that Telstra personnel would be sharing the stage with us, highlighting their product – wasn’t this talk supposed to be about helping our senior citizens feel more at ease with technology? - we would have been more than happy to have them up there with us, doing their best to change our mind.

As we pointed out to her, any concern for our peace of mind was entirely mis-directed. We would have had absolutely no problems sharing a stage with anyone from Telstra, including their robust spokesman, Phil Burgess. We might have been able to help the audience evaluate the Telstra products, and debate whether or not Telstra acted like a spoiled business brat etc.

Alas, our senior citizens will have to decide for themselves whether those products Telstra presents – with whoever the magazine chooses to address them – really are good value. More importantly, perhaps, they might ask themselves whether they are likely to learn how to be more comfortable with their computers at an event that seems to be more concerned with allowing Telstra to flog its products to a sector of society that possibly doesn't know what represents good value, than with hearing from a columnist who might not be head over heels in love with Telstra, but prides himself on having an objective view.