The only way to save the Royal Mail is privatise it now

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Successive politicians have approached the Royal Mail rather as a useless doctor might choose to treat a patient's symptoms without ever attempting a cure.

And as you would expect with such palliative care, the disease - chronic inefficiency, underinvestment, greedy overpowerful unions, rubbish management, declining competitiveness - has gained a steadily greater grip on our once universally admired Post Office.

Now Lord Mandelson is suggesting yet another unsatisfactory fudge; a part privatisation that has enraged the unions and his own party, but won't solve the Royal Mail's problems.

The only way to save it is a complete and immediate privatisation of the entire business.

Any further delay, fudge or prevarication and the Royal Mail will shortly join the long list of other British institutions that have been destroyed by weak politicians and our post will be - expensively - delivered by TNT or Deutsche Post.

The crisis now facing the Royal Mail began when the Tories were last in power.

Michael Heseltine, doing the job that Peter Mandelson now has, looked at the British postal system, and could see that it was going to be squeezed.

On the one hand there was going to be an increasingly open market in mail delivery imposed by European competition rules, and on the other the Post Office was still a Seventies style public sector organisation that had never been reformed under Margaret Thatcher, and was still in the grip of all those restrictive practices that had once plagued so many nationalised industries.

Heseltine realised that privatisation was required, but as so often in the later years of the Tory administration, there was no stomach for the fight and the decision was ducked.

At about the same time, in 1995, the German Government privatised its postal business. Deutsche Post is now the world's largest logistics group, employing over half a million people in 220 countries, with sales last year of £55 billion.

That could have been the Royal Mail's fate, but instead it has fallen into disrepair and disrepute.

The Labour Government inherited this mess from the Tories - and made it even worse. They renamed it - briefly and expensively - Consignia, and brought in private sector managers.

Unfortunately, they chose the wrong man, Adam Crozier, whose claim to fame had been to hire Sven Goran Ericcson during an unsuccessful stint in the charge of the Football Association.

Crozier had no idea how to run an organisation the size of the Royal Mail, and he was in a difficult position anyway, because the unionised workforce was well aware that the government was really in charge.

As a result, for ten years the Royal Mail has stumbled along. Crozier hit upon a clever wheeze to increase so-called 'profits'. By running down the service - getting rid of the second post, closing thousands of Post Offices, failing to invest in new equipment - while at the same time increasing the cost of sending a letter far above inflation, he was able to deliver 'dividends' for his Government paymasters.

This kept them happy, and ensured huge bonuses for himself - in 2005, he was paid £2.7 million, making him the highest paid public sector employee in Britain.

But he was merely postponing the eventual catastrophe, as EU regulators demanded ever greater liberalisation of the market, gradually eroding the Royal Mail's monopoly.

And because the Royal Mail was so incompetent, it lost most of the business that was opened to competition - parcels, business post etc - to other private sector providers. This then made its financial situation even more dire.

It also failed, until last year, to reform its enormous pension scheme, a typically generous public sector final salary one that was wonderful for the employees, but is now far more than £6 billion in debt.

The Government has promised that the taxpayer will take over liability for years of generous promises, but is now trying to bully the unions into submission by implying that this will only happen if their proposed part privatisation goes ahead.

But it is unfortunately politically inconceivable that any government would allow the scheme to go bust, so no one believes the threat for a minute.

Whether or not Lord Mandelson's fudged plan goes ahead, the future is now pretty clear.

The Royal Mail will continue unreformed and inefficient, with too many employees and not enough investment. As the final liberalisation of the mail market goes ahead, virtually all profitable business will be stolen by the private sector.

The Royal Mail will eventually fold, leaving the taxpayer with a huge bill, the government with thousands of unemployed and angry postmen, and customers across Britain paying far more for a significantly reduced postal service.

Many will simply give up on 'snail mail' altogether, accelerating the trend towards email and other electronic communications. Another great British institution will have gone down the drain and politicians of all parties should hang their heads in shame.

[DGP1]

Just wait until Mr Daily Mail reader stops getting his post delivered everyday and has to put up a box at the end of his property to recieve his mail (and if the privatised RM can get away with it charging him for the privilege).

[banner18]

Privatisation will mean two deliveries a week, less post offices, far greater postal prices across the board, and still these people argue for it?
A private company will make profit at any cost. There is no way that TNT could deliver the customer and service focus that RM now delivers.

Old lady needs her post office book within a few days? Hard luck, she'll get it when its economically viable. A business requires 6 deliveries a week, Sure but you are gonna pay a lot for that. Send one man up a path with 2 letters, no chance, get some boxes on or we don't deliver because it costs too much. Vans down farm tracks? haha get some boxes or better still you country folk will be collecting your mail from a local sorting office, you can't expect us to provide that kind of service?

Just a few of the delights in store that I can think of, but hey ho, it looks like thats what they are going to get.

[BELIAL]

Only to be expected from a right wing rag that prints articles like "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" and congratulated Hitler on his well executed invasion of Checeslovakia

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Only to be expected from a right wing rag that prints articles like "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" and congratulated Hitler on his well executed invasion of Checeslovakia

In early 1934, Lord Rothermere (owner of Daily Mail) and the Mail were sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Rothermere wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts," in January 1934, in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine," although after the violence of the 1934 Olympia meeting involving the BUF, the Mail withdrew its support for Mosley. Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance toward them up to 1939. During this period it was the only British newspaper to consistently support the German Nazi Party.

The Mail's consistency regarding this controversial stance has lasted to the present day, a remarkable feat regardless of one's political persuasion. Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler on many occasions. On October 1, 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that "Adolf the Great" would become a popular figure in Britain. In 1937, the Mail's chief war correspondent, George Ward Price, to whom Mussolini once personally wrote in support of him and the newspaper, published a book, I Know These Dictators, in defense of Hitler and Mussolini. Rothermere and the Mail supported Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, particularly during the events leading up to the Munich Agreement in 1938. However, after the Nazi invasion of Prague in 1939, the Mail changed position and urged Chamberlain to prepare for war, not least, perhaps, because on account of its stance it had been threatened with closure by the British Government.

The paper continues to be referred to on occasion as the "Daily Heil," referring to its firm right wing stance and its support for Mosley.

[Thorby Bislam]

Yeah, but that was 50 yars ago. There can be no-one who worked for the DM then still in employment. they will all have retired or died long since.
Surely the current DM staff are not hired on how they think of events that happened before they were born.

[BELIAL]

Yeah, but that was 50 yars ago. There can be no-one who worked for the DM then still in employment. they will all have retired or died long since.
Surely the current DM staff are not hired on how they think of events that happened before they were born.

Guess the name of the biggest bigwig at the Daily Mail today? ROTHERMERE !