A different route to privatisation

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There does not seem to me to be any substantive argument for the privatisation of Royal Mail ("This privatisation mania exchanges profit for loss", The Herald, May 11).

Many private companies are doing very well in niche parts of the delivery system.

The only rationale is the conservative hatred of public ownership. Similarly the importance of a well-balanced system of energy and the management of our resources is too important to be left to market forces. The answer is usually to leave things to private companies but to have some kind of Government control systems to ensure conformity with Government aims.

In Scotland we have the opportunity to take a different route. In energy provision there could be a company set up giving everyone a share but no-one allowed to accumulate large holdings. This could work in fields such as Royal Mail and electricity.

Managing our resources in the best way for the people of this country can only be achieved if we have a democracy instead of oligarchies, eg the Eton oligarchy running central government. We have to find a way to beat these groups and get a different kind of person into politics. We want people who will put the common good before their self interests. How we are going to achieve this is difficult. Voting for an independent Scotland would be a start.

Jim Mcadam,

23 Drumdow Road, Turnberry.

Ian Bell writes with incredulity about the Government's inability to make "a rational case [for forthcoming privatisations] even in terms of its own ideology". Perhaps the present Government is not as ideologically driven as he supposes.

Perhaps its motivations are simpler and more materialistic: as long ago as 1937 George Orwell highlighted the tension between the wealth producers in society (manufacturing industry) and the rentiers (those whose livelihood depends not on their own production but on investment returns from the labour of others, at home or abroad).

The privatisations which are about to happen are designed to provide good investment opportunities for the rentiers whose interests it is the Conservatives' prime responsibility to serve. Valuation reports produced annually by asset managers have more sway over Government economic thinking than ideology, even that of markets.

Anthony Lodge,

Schoolhouse, Carnbee, Anstruther.