How do you destroy the best postal service in the world?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Tuesday thoughts: Trevor Colman MEP

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H OW do you destroy the best postal service in the world? Simple. You bankrupt it.

Crazy? Read on.

There are 200 Post Offices still listed in the Bristol area but not for much longer. Here's why.

Until the late 1990s, Royal Mail had a monopoly of the British postal service, providing universal, twice-a-day deliveries and collections, regardless of where you lived. It worked beautifully.

The profitable urban and city services off-set the expensive rural, countryside operations. Like the village pub and the bobby on the beat, the Post Office was an integral part of British life. It was the best and most reliable postal service in the world. And it made a profit.

The European Union (EU), however, has an obsession with competition regardless of whether a national monopoly, like the Royal Mail, works. In 1997, the EU Directive 97/67/EC Privatisation of Postal Services introduced an EU-wide postal service concept completely at odds with the unique British system.

What to do? Royal Mail and the Post Office network had to go and so were gradually and secretly dismantled.

Directive 97/67/EC reduced the Royal Mail's monopoly to mail weighing less than 350 grams, making all other areas open to privatisation. This allowed private companies, mainly the Dutch TNT and German Deutschepost DHL, to cherry-pick lucrative areas, leaving the less profitable to the Royal Mail.

A second Directive, 2002/39/EC, gave access to a further chunk of Royal Mail business. Within less than a decade, Royal Mail was losing money. Worse was to follow.

British politicians nudged pension payments into bank accounts and the sale of TV licences was taken away from Post Offices. Amazingly, private postal companies can require the Royal Mail to handle post on their behalf at a price to them of up to nine pence a package cheaper than 2nd class charges. In effect, Royal Mail and British taxpayers subsidise foreign competition.

In order to hide all this from us, the British government subsidised the Post Offices but, by so doing, contravened EU law. The subterfuge was allowed to continue only after the EU stipulated that 2,500 Post Offices would have to close. They were duly closed.

The EU set 2009 as the year "for the full accomplishment of the internal market for postal services". That's why the Government is about to sell-off what remains of our postal service.

Crazy or what?

●Trevor Colman is UKIP MEP for the South West, which covers Bristol

[clashcityrocker]

You know you are in real trouble when you need a UKIP MEP to argue your cause.

[DGP1]

You know you are in real trouble when you need a UKIP MEP to argue your cause.

[Lounge Lizard]

You know you are in real trouble when you need a UKIP MEP to argue your cause.

"Trevor Colman is UKIP MEP for the South West, which covers Bristol" - a city built on the Slave Trade which Trevor probably wishes hadn't been abolished.

[subbie]

When it comes to the PO Network part of this MEP's rant, he is talking total bollocks. Which is par for the course with UKIP types. POL wanted to close as many PO's as possible not Europe, Europe actually tried to prevent this but had to bend to the UK argument that it would be in the public interest to close PO's so that a sustainable future could be provided for those that remained.
Well the UK lied to Europe, cos we have had two closure programs, a third is just around the corner, mainly Crown PO's and yet not one penny has found its way into the remaining part of the Network, so PO's continue to be under threat, I am just waiting for the coalition to announce a volunteer based network of PO's to replace the regulars who will simply go out of business.

Subbie