Unthinkable? Not privatising Royal Mail

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -editorial" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The traditional reason for flogging the service was that it was a financial basket case. Not any more

If ministers get their way, our postal services will be sold off within a year. Details of the privatisation are taking shape: Goldman Sachs and UBS will be in charge of a consortium of investment banks providing advice in return for hefty fees (even if business minister Michael Fallon considers £30m "speculation", his letter to this paper yesterday did not rule out the sum); provision has been made for postal
workers to enjoy a £300m stake; and the Royal Mail's chief executive, Moya Greene, is touring North America in the hope of rousing foreign buyers. Yet with the resolution of these second-order questions, the biggest one becomes harder to answer: why is the coalition flogging Britain's postal network? The traditional reason for flogging the service was that it was a financial basket case. Not any more: annual profits are up over 60%. Last year's whopping rise in stamp prices, and the dumping of the mail's pension liabilities on the government books, means that the entity now looks enviably stable. So what would a sale add? Hawking a recovering organisation before the next election will not raise bumper sums for the Treasury. But it probably means that stamp prices will keep rising and the service will get worse (imagine what rural deliveries will be like come 2020). The management is right to talk about the need for investment – but this could be done now, simply by the mail borrowing. There's no need for it to change hands. Privatisation of the mail increasingly looks like a policy without a purpose.

[UnhappyGremlin]

Privatisation of the mail increasingly looks like a policy without a purpose.

I disagree. There is indeed a purpose. But it is vastly different to the one that RM are trying to bang into the heads of their employees and the public.
The purpose is profiteering on an enormous scale, and for those profits to end up in the hands of a very select few, quite possibly mates of the current RM board and/or of MP's, and the current RM board themselves.
Or am I too cynical?