kick in the privates

[Cut Off King]

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Joan Burnie: Royal Mail's another kick in the privates for mug customers
12 Jul 2013 07:27

JOAN BURNIE rails against the privatisation of the Royal Mail, and points to other examples of privatisation and how they failed to benefit the nation.
Royal Mail mail centre Royal Mail mail centre

TWO thirds of the great British public, according to the latest survey, are opposed to any privatisation of the Royal Mail.

So natch it will be dragooned through the Commons and no doubt be the same smashing success as all those other privatisations, including British Rail, who now receive more in subsidies than they ever did when railways were a state-run industry.

Ticket prices have also risen way above inflation. Still, not to worry. Mugs, people such as Richard Branson via Virgin Rail, have made fortunes out of it.
Royal Mail employees to be handed 10 per cent of shares free of charge as Business Secretary Vince Cable announces privatisation plans

Then there’s the sell-off and splitting up of our energy companies. The shareholders may have done pretty well out of it.

Pity so many live abroad because much of the industry, including British Gas, are largely owned by foreign companies and conglomerates.

Shame too that prices to the poor b***** passengers have risen faster than a ferret after a rabbit.

And it’s brought that wonderful word, “competition” into the market.

Except for reasons that don’t appear to bother Ofgem – that toothless yapping chihuahua of a watch dog, which, hee haw, looks after customers’ interests – there isn’t an awful lot of that competition about.

One lot’s prices goes up, they ALL go up. That includes the big bucks trousered by their bosses, such as Centrica’s chief executive Sam Laidlaw, with a basic salary of £950,000 in 2012, but which those lovely jubbly bonuses pushed up to almost £5million.

Nice lolly if you can get it, and no doubt those hoping to get their sticky fingers on Royal Mail will expect the same largesse.

Whether it will benefit anyone else is debatable, especially its current employees, thanks to that other business buzz word, “rationalisation,” or to put it in simpler terms, P45s all round. Since they were privatised, British Telecom have shed about 100,000 jobs.

Fair enough, they did better than British Steel, which now has zero jobs – same more or less at British Coal. As for those of us at the other end of the postal chain and the pillar box, will we see any benefits?

Will the service magically improve once another predatory company sees it’s a plum for the plucking?

Maybe, but I much doubt it, not least if you live at the wrong end of some wee bit hill and glen.

Meantime, I seem to recall that one of the many dire warnings from “Better Together” was that should Scotland vote Yes in 2014, we would wave bye-bye to a decent postal service.

Wonder what they think about this plan? Perhaps their cheerleaders, including Alistair Darling, might tell us. But I was forgetting.

The Government assures us safeguards will be built in and no one will find the postie no longer knocks once never mind twice. Aye, and my head buttons up the back.

[UnhappyGremlin]

Good to see opinion is against the Government on this.
Whether or not it makes a difference in the end, who knows?
Hope so.