An institution that has been in the publics hands since the before the creation of the kingdom in 1516 is now to be sold. I wonder if they will be able to keep the “Royal” part.
Anyway, funny seeing how conservative these people are. I’m sure they are just going back ´600 years, not being ultra radical.
I wonder what these idiots will do when there’s nothing left to sell to plug the holes in their budget.
50 years from now; Buy one trident, get one for free? Maybe Seeland can become a worldpower finally!
Personally, I’m for privatization for a lot of things. Not all conservatives* are idiots. Why should the government be involved in mail delivery at all? There are a lot of areas that government should not be involved in. The private sector usually does a better job with lower costs: especially pension legacy benefits.
*ETA: The conservative label has a different meaning in other countries, especially those with more social programs in place. The Canadian Conservative Party is undoubtedly left of the US democrats, and the same probably holds true in the UK.
Why SHOULDN’T it be involved? You haven’t answered that question yet. I think its debatable that the “private sector usually does a better job with lower costs”.
Many things in the country are run by the government because only the government can guarantee that the service is available to all without consideration for profits. Phone companies weren’t happy to have to run landlines to rural towns where there’s a handful of people, but they had to do that because something like phones are considered essential. To for-profit corporations, “essential” means anything that makes them a profit. Lack of money or a population that can support a business means that no business is going to operate there, but what if its something as essential like the mail? Should people be forced to move, or take a bus for an hour, to go to a post office just to pick up their check or a jury summons?
Business and government serve different needs. Pretending that business has everyone’s interest at heart without a regard for profits is foolish, so I’m completely against selling off lots of public agencies to private control. Until AT&T can guarantee that I won’t be paying any more for my phone in a single room shack in the desert, or UPS can guarantee me that I can pay 50 cents and mail a letter from a mountain cabin to Australia, then those things must continue to remain under the government’s control. If it loses money, so what? Its essential, we should all be guaranteed a minimum standard of living
Very well for the institutions that got the shares. There is a strong argument it was undervalued and sold off cheap - shares increased in value immediately and a there were a lot of quick sales and instant profits.
It has also worked out in the medium term with the company turning in significant profits year on year.
Universal service or regulated prices do not require state ownership. Legislation can require private companies to meet public need. This is the case with the Royal Mail who are required to deliver to all addresses in the UK for a price fixed by the regulator.
My experience from the UK is that most services are immeasurably better since the state monopolies such as British Telecom were privatised. Lots of people seem to have forgotten how long you had to wait to get a phone connected before the sell off.
Let’s just say I don’t have faith that the profit-driven private sector will not try to game the system through loopholes to eliminate a money losing division. In cases where there are sure to be losses, I’d rather it be maintained by someone who is not paid by commission but rather by a dedication to providing the service. I’m not saying that it can’t happen, I trust Google over some things over the government, but there’s a conflict of interest.
Well, it was sold off in 1984, so I imagine there’s been a few tech advances since then. The big thing was that the newly privatised BT wanted to run fibre to every address, and provide content to pay for it. Hah, no, said the Thatcher government, the free market will provide, the former state monopoly cannot do that! The free market went about as well as you expect, a patchwork of shit.
Because it’s the bloody post service. Because kings and real conservatives created them as public companies in the service of the nation. This is a joke. A disgrace.
‘Conservative’ as a title for that party is merely nostalgic misdirection, as with many world wide neoliberal takeovers. They have been radical since Lady Thatcher, who was herself in the previous century’s* Manchester Liberal* tradition ( Bright, Cobden, Herbert Spencer, all those dismal old guys ).
I know, obviously. This is the type of crap that gets me down. The fact that I know that I will be paying 30% or 50% in taxes to some decrepit private corporations all my life if I actually don’t run my business into the ground.
Who are these people with “a dedication to providing the service”? The bosses in the state monopolies were dedicated to maintaining their own interests and satisfying their political masters, the consumers had no option so customer satisfaction was way down their priority list.
Don’t get me wrong, I worked in the public sector for thirty years and strongly believe some things need to have state involvement, nor would I defend some of the idiocies that successive governments have perpetrated in the way things have been privatised (British Rail anyone?), but for god’s sake don’t assume state run enterprises are better for the consumer thanks to their selfless staff not being tied to the profit motive.
Yeah, and so are people in the US. Not private letters so much, but some bank statements, magazines, documents that need paper copies, and, especially, parcels. The parcel part is not going to die any time soon - it’s growing.
The one thing that surprised me about the sell-off was that they didn’t just sell off Parcelforce rather than the whole Royal Mail. Parcelforce has the best long-term profit potential, so is the most attractive part to buyers, and letter delivery does have some arguments for nationalisation because it means that even people in remote areas can access essential services (like sending in documents for benefits or tax purposes) without punitive costs. I guess there must have been some technical reason it was sold off as a whole.
The PO is turning a profit now because it was only fiddling by the govt that made it look like it wasn’t selling a profit before. It covers the same network and has all the same employees, so being privatised hasn’t actually changed the service, just changed who gets the money from it and changed the pension plans of new employees (not the existing ones), and potentially changed the costs for people in difficult-to-reach areas - they’re protected for about ten years IIRC (my internet connection is far too shit to look for links reliably right now. The internet connection provided by a BT competitor…)
Maybe Seeland can become a worldpower finally!