Would a privatised Royal Mail have a first class future?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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The universal service obligation has been a defining characteristic of the UK post for 170 years.

Scarlet pillar boxes and the postie plodding that final mile to drop a letter on to the mat are treasured features of a unique national structure that reaches into every far-flung corner of Britain. Not for much longer.

Yesterday Business Secretary Vince Cable committed the Government to a complete sale of Royal Mail, after a report concluded this was the only option for a business suffering from falling volumes, low investment, inefficiency and an £8bn pension deficit.

It is certainly more difficult to defend the ongoing subsidy of postal services at a time when school buildings, playparks and the like are facing the axe. However, in the current climate Royal Mail could end up being sold for a song, while the taxpayer continues to bear the cost of its pension deficit. Inevitably, private investors would cherry-pick the most lucrative parts of the business, as has happened with parcel post, and the inevitable long-term outcome would be the erosion of the universal service. And, though the Post Office network would remain in public hands, the sale of Royal Mail would be bound to weaken it.

Instead, freed of the burden of the pension fund and given a regulatory regime that enabled it to charge a more realistic price for house to house deliveries for its competitors, a revitalised 21st-century Royal Mail, along with a regenerated Post Office growing its financial services, could have a first class future.

[Big Daz]

It is certainly more difficult to defend the ongoing subsidy of postal services

What subsidy? Only POL gets that and will continue to do so even if the amount goes down and the sell off/splitting of RMG goes ahead.

[andy2007]

Did you really expect the Press to get their facts straight?
They're publishing the Governments propaganda, before they make their latest attempt to sell RM.

[fishtank]

Did you really expect the Press to get their facts straight?
They're publishing the Governments propaganda, before they make their latest attempt to sell RM.

99% of the public think that their taxes pay our wages.
Maybe if joe public realised we are a self-funding publicly owned company we could perhaps count on their support a little more.
A message that the CWU could do more to push i think..

[andy2007]

I couldn't agree more!

[BELIAL]

Now who was it that said that the dominant culture is that of the dominant class

[baldrick]

Now who was it that said that the dominant culture is that of the dominant class

A dom?

[BELIAL]

Adom who

[baldrick]

Adom who

A dom who will cut anything to get his/her bonus.