Get your claws off our service

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Privatisation of the Royal Mail will be bad for postal workers and for the public at large, because the priority of any privateer will be profits rather than service.

It beggars belief that, after the bitter lessons learnt from the privatisation of rail, water, gas, electricity, telecoms, British Airways and so on, the parliamentary mouthpieces for City speculators can still have their claims on service quality and value for money taken seriously.

Gas privatisation was sold on the basis of a dodgy "Tell Sid" advertising campaign that promised a mythical people's capitalism.

People who had never previously been shareholders were urged to buy shares in British Gas at knockdown prices and to build up a shares portfolio through successive privatisations.

It was tosh then and it's tosh now when Business Secretary Vince Cable is setting aside 10 per cent of shares in a privatised Royal Mail for postal staff.

Most people who took advantage of the British Gas and subsequent privatisations cashed in their shares within 12 months, copping their profit - or government bribe - and concentrating ownership in finance houses, pension funds and private equity outfits.

If postal workers agreed to drop their total opposition to privatisation in return for this latest government bribe, the same situation would be repeated.

Just as gas workers paid for the handouts and the privateers' profits windfall with their jobs, so would postal staff.

No trust whatsoever can be placed in Postal Affairs Minister Ed Davey's assertion that the overriding aim of the Postal Services Bill is to protect the universal postal service.

Universality is not at risk under public ownership, but it certainly would be if privateers got their mucky paws on it.

What trust can be placed on any pledge made now by the Con-Dem coalition? Two years ago, David Cameron was talking about a £2,000 maximum bonus for bankers and it's only weeks ago that Cable and his deadbeat boss Nick Clegg were threatening all manner of sanctions against greedy bankers.

It was all hot air. Anyone raising these pie-crust promises in future would be told that it wasn't the government's job to micro-manage a successful British business and look at how much tax profitable companies pay.

If privatisation is rammed through against the wishes of staff, service users and public opinion, the universal postal service will be history.

Thousands of local post offices would also be at risk, as indeed they were as a result of the previous Labour government's short-sighted policies.

If shadow business secretary John Denham's opposition to the Con-Dem Bill is genuine, this will involve also a recognition that new Labour's record, including Peter Mandelson's privatisation plans, which were torpedoed by a wave of opposition coordinated by the Communication Workers Union, left a lot to be desired.

Contrary to impressions given by privatisation-bent politicians, Royal Mail is not a basket case. It made profits of £404 million last year and £321 million the previous year.

And although postal liberalisation has allowed a number of private "competitors" to cream off some of Royal Mail's earnings, the public service continues to deliver 99 per cent of mail that it was previously guaranteed under the Royal Mail monopoly.

Ministers oppose a publicly owned Royal Mail on ideological grounds, but they will find that a union-co-ordinated broad campaign