Royal Mail privatisation - Odds: 20-1 Re Gordon Brown.

[POSTMAN]

Telegraph

If anything is likely to hold back Brown's more radical instincts towards business, it is Labour's growing dependence on the unions. Many fear that the so-called Warwick Agreement struck before the last general election could be taken further under Brown.

Old Labour's rising power was recently manifested at Royal Mail, where management efforts to issue share options were blocked by a union campaign against what it saw as creeping privatisation. But the hybrid status of the postal service looks untenable in the long term.

Facing fierce competition from private sector rivals, the company needs radical surgery and long-term investment that may no longer be possible in public hands. Allan Leighton, the chairman, who is often seen as Blair's man, is said to be comfortable with Brown's arrival but will need support if he is not to be further undermined by the Communication Workers Union.

If Brown wanted to demonstrate his independence from the unions and commitment to selling off assets that do not make sense on the government books, there could be few grander gestures than doing what all previous governments have shied away from and privatising Royal Mail outright.

BROWN STUFF

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Wow the strike/IA thats coming seems to get more and more important as each day goes by.

[F0zziebear]

Leighton will be gone within 12 months, and don't be surprised if Crozier follows him shortly afterwards

[POSTMAN]

Leighton will be gone within 12 months, and don't be surprised if Crozier follows him shortly afterwards

TBH not sure whether thats a good or bad thing,better the devils you know sometimes.

[F0zziebear]

Leighton has been known to be stepping down for a while and a successor is being found. As for Crozier it's a question of whether he can get the right job somewhere else.

Under New Labour privatisation/commercialisation of public services based on the CLinton years was the approach. Now that Labour are more relient on the unions for money and support they will have to take on some more traditional labour approaches, which does not include privatising Royal Mail. This leaves the company in a difficult position. It has to upgrade it's processing machinery as it is at least 15-20 years behind the competitors and the rest of Europe. This also applies to many of the buildings that aren't long enough to take the new machinery. To become fully competitive in the E2E market they will also need to automate more of the DO process (esp. primary sortation), which currently takes approx. 1 hour of a postie's time each morning (this is an approximation before some of you jump in and say you do more or less than the time I have mentioned).

The alternative is the turn the clock back and get the government to prevent competitors offering a mass E2E service. Currently no-one has done this as either the operational or commercial viability isn't there.

I agree that the better the devil you know, but the DTI have proven that they can turn their backs on decisons made at one moment or another which means RM is really being run from Westminster and not from Old Street. The people at the top of the company who have all been brought in from other private companies will not stand for this meddling (as they are not used to not getting their own way), so don't be surprised if you hear about several exits over the next 12-18 months.

In-spite of this there will be further pushes to out source payroll (finance & HR) which currently has several thousand people working in those departments processing your D2D payments amongst many other things. RM has one of the most complicated pay structures in the UK, which drives up the cost of running payroll each month.

So personally I wouldn't be backing privatisation at 20-1, if I did I would also be putting my mortgage on Brown losing the next general election with an accumalator bet on you boys going on strike as well, and possibly CWU threatening to withdraw party funding. Anyone else interested in joining me on this bet. Amendments welcome

F0zz

[johno47]

The thing that worrys me is that by Brown offering privatisation or partial privatisation, he can rake in a huge amount of cash for the goverment coffers, and at a time when they need an influx of cash, so well have wait and see, also as far as Leighton and Crozier going and i can see what you mean by better the devil you know, i dont think these two have done anything apart from panick in the face of competion and not getting the business ready to face it, they should have been lobbying MPs to stop postcon opening up the market to competition 2 years before they had to, they should been asking the goverment to put back the millions of pounds that they didnt put into our pension fund whilst at the same time taking 90% of the profit and not recieving it back as a loan and not investing in the business, is it any wonder we are 15-20 years behind when they have been taking money out and not investing in RM during that time, them two were too busy thinking about how much they could rake in for themselves had RM been privatised, you can bet that they would have had bigger bonuses, pay and severence terms.

[L Tommo]

Fozzie has diversifide.. He is now the TIC TAC MAN over Walthamstow dogs!!!!! 20-1 with a tricast Accumilator bet of brown in the s**t n US on the cobbles!!! BIG AL ADIOS!!!

I think FOZZIE has the smart £££ covered!!

OUT


DONT LAY OFF THE BET TILL YOU KNOW THE RUNNERS N RIDERS!

[L Tommo]

ITS A BLAME SOMEONE ELSE WORLD!! BIG AL, lil ad, answer to the GOV, the GOV dont give a shite unless they get there £££ the CWU have passed over the brown paper bags for years and RM blame everybody apart from themselves!! WE just sit in the box seat waiting for the chop!!! THANKS FOR f***ing NOTHING!!

OUT

WILL THE LAST ONE OUT , TURN THE LIGHTS OFF PLEASE!!

[F0zziebear]

Gordon won't privatise RM, it would be a PR disaster and a possible election loser.
Under the circumstances and the hostility towards change in my opinion Crozier & Leighton have done almost as much as I would have expected they could do. Many of the changes they would like to make seem to get caught up in the bureacracy of middle management. THey have taken out numerous layers, which makes it easier to get messages from the top to the bottom. I wouldn't say they have been perfect, but I rekcon the company would be in a situation more like the NHS now if they hadn't come in, especially Leighton.

Leighton especially did not join for the money. He could have earn't a lot more in the private sector. I would also hazard a guess that Crozier could earn more as well. The problem RM had was that they wanted private sector CEO/Chairman, but looking to pay more like public sector civil servant wages. The two things are not compatible.

I am not asking you to like them, the £57k signing-on fee or whatever it was, the fact that the job appears to be getting harder and the wages are not going up as much as you want, and that frontline management seem to be under more pressure and this is taken out on posties etc.....

The sale of 80 odd post offices on prime high street locations, should help fend off problems with the PO for a while, but their merger into WH Smith stores worries me, as WH Smith's business model isn't exactly at the top end. I would prefer to have seen them merge into TESCO Local (though not a big fan of their rapid encroachment across the country, but that's business I suppose!)

Don't let the early morning coffee beans grind u down

[johno47]

I dont think that will stop Gordon Brown privitisation of RM the vast amount of money that a partial sale of RM would generate with the goverment keeping a 51% holding would prop up the goverment coffers, Blair wanted to do it in 97 but was stopped because of a public outcry thats why he put the regulator in so that when the regulator said that the markets needed to be opened up Blair could hold his hands up and say "nothing to do with me" and lets get this straight the only reason RM was in a financial mess when Leighton and Crozier came in was because when RM was given commercial freedom in 98 the management of RM went on a spending spree buying companies all around the world and then having to sell them again for a loss, changing the name of one of the most marketable and known business names in the world to Consignia instead of investing in the business which had had no investment for 20 years, its almost as if the goverment told them to f**k up the finances so as to make it more easier to get rid of, Leighton and Crozier didnt do anything magical to RM they lied about the state of the business they even threatened the CWU with court action because it was going to show that RM wasnt in as bad a way as what they said, Leighton didnt come here for the money he came because he likes his own image it would look good on his CV if he could allegedly make it look like he had turned one of the biggest busnesses in the UK around, and instead of selling off prime time PO locations, why doesnt he reintergrate parcelforce back into RM think of all the biuldings he could get rid of then. Leighton and Crozier are no messiahs like you seem to think.

[L Tommo]

Great piece.. Ive been saying this point on Driving the business down from the Gov for a long time.. The race to the bottom is alive a kicking in the way this Grand old Business is being run. Postcomm are just the toolbox from which the grey suits are tinkering with us from.. Lay blame with BIG ALL OR lil ad but they are just puppets like us, The difference is they get 73k to start this job as a bung, we get a Uniform and a long list of "wot not 2 do's n donts. When the CWU went to uncover the state of RM, i wonder who pulled the story?? CWU HQ or The labour party (grey suits) So RM was gonna take US to court??? SO fecking wot??? If its true then wots the worry??? The only people to lose from this fact coming out are the FAT CATS, BIG AL and lil ad's mob!!!!

The people aint as stupid as they think!! And it pisses me off no end when they think we are..

OUT


DONT LET THE GREY SUITS IN IVORY TOWERS GRIND US DOWN...

[F0zziebear]

Leighton loves himself and yes you're right he wanted to turn something around like this, write a book, do the dinner circuit (he's doing this anyway!) As for Crozier suppose he was taken along for a ride by Al. As for the Government and their predecessors I agree as well. I don't think they are taking the company to the bottom, but at the same time am disappointed at the lack of progress in recent years.

The finances weren't as bad as Al & Adam said (classic statement when taking over the running of a company). It was not losing £1.5m a day, but at the same time it was if you stuck loads of one-off payments and losses in the Yr1. As for the companies they were buying and selling for a loss, well that was before my time and what an embrassing state of affairs.

Having said that you can't go abroad buying companies with a name like Royalmail and they were right to create some type of holding group name, but were duped by the other companies such as arriva, aviva etc... doing something similar around the same time. They never got rid of the RM, PO Ltd or Parcelforce names, but carried out an horrendous PR campaign disaster.

I still don't think Brown will sell off RM, because the only partners are the likes of Deutschepost, TPG, or possibly USPS and also Fed-ex. That would be political suicide.

Johno a good piece u wrote and I@m not going to add anymore on the topic otherwise I'll be going round in circles

F0zz dizzy and disturbed