'Should the Royal Mail be part-privatised?' poll discussion

Former_MSE_Lawrence

Poll between 01-08 June 2009:

Should the Royal Mail be part-privatised?

The government remains resolute in plans to sell off up to 49% of the Royal Mail to private bidders. This part-privatisation is a tricky business, with many arguments for and against...

FOR: The amount of letters we send each other has plummeted; personal correspondence now accounts for just 14% of snail-mail (thanks to email, texts, Facebook, Twitter and numerous others). The Royal Mail, though profitable, has a large pension fund deficit weighing it down. Part-privatisation could be a good solution for maintaining daily deliveries.

AGAINST: Private ownership may lead to thousands of redundancies, higher prices and less services. Standards could fall and our personal mail (which is less profitable) may be deprioritised. The Royal Mail dates back to 1516, so some see it as an important part of our heritage.

Should part-privatisation go ahead? Which of the following is nearest your answer?

A. No. The Royal Mail should always be a public service. 61% (4003 votes)
B. No. Privatisation will mean a more expensive/less efficient service. 11% (704 votes)
C. No. Privatisation will mean job losses and more Post Office closures. 10% (660 votes)
D. Yes. I don’t care whether the Royal Mail remains a public service. 2% (139 votes)
E. Yes. Market conditions mean the Royal Mail can’t survive while nationalised. 4% (249 votes)
F. Yes. Privatisation will lead to better service/more competition 9% (557 votes)
G. Don’t know/Not bothered either way. 3% (208 votes)

Total votes: 6520

Voting has now closed, but you can still click 'post reply' to discuss below. Thanks

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ThinkingOfLinking

G. I don't know. I actually think a bit of C and a bit of F and am wondering about B.

freshc_2

It just makes me feel savage to think of all the homeland resources we have sold off. If other countries can muster someone or other to run our services and utilities then ARE WE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO MANAGE OUR OWN? The Royal Mail should be the blueprint worldwide for a successful enterprise. We have the brains and the aptitude to make our mail services a success. Instead we are lead by successive governments that 'know better' and sell off all the best bits and leave us to struggle on with what's left. Give the Royal Mail back all the parcel and mail rights that have been given to the Germans and the Dutch and anyone else, RE-ORGANISE IT, GIVE IT EXPERT LEADERS AND LET'S RUN IT AS A PROUD AND PROFITABLE WORLD LEADING ENTERPRISE. If not we will be dictated to by Holland as to when and if we can collect our own mail, at a price!

sane01

You know I have had a discussion about this today on transport board as I was involved in a car accident with a Royal Mail van and nobody seemed to get me at all.

The short version is that the postie was going to fast although it will be 50/50 due to it being a single track road but my point is these sort of incidents will only increase the more goverment etc try to make it a more efficient service. My normal postie who is very careful has been told to get her foot down and get a move on - NO OVERTIME ALLOWED - she has told them she would rather not kill a child so she will remain slow and they do not have to pay her overtime.

The point I am trying to make is these people are on the road everyday in post buses, 4x4 everyday to make them stressed out and always rushing is just asking for trouble and it is morally wrong.

I am sure there are many more reasons people can think of to privatise not to privatise buy hey - SAVE A CHILD OR ADULTS LIFE - Lets not have stressed out posties behind the wheels of vans etc.

peter_the_piper

Can't for the life of me work out how the Government can say they are thinking of part privatisation because of the pensions problem, amongsrt other reasons, and then say they will take the pension into public ownership. If they can do this for the private sector why can't they do it anyway and leave the Royal Mail alone.

rickbonar

So far 57% say A
11% B
11% c

A significant no vote.

If Royal mail is privatised then will it follow in the footsteps of other privatisations?

Railways
BT
Gas
Electric
The Bus service

not to mention other services such as Banks already in the private sector.

In all of the services mentioned by me off the top of my head, ALL without fail have resulted in a stampede and raft of rip-offs, poor slow service, dirty tricks and miss selling and you're paying through the nose for the privelege.

Even the milkman service ... now there was a Thatcher success story !

Personally I'd like to see all these nationalised.

Can anyone actually tell us of a privatised service which is better??

rickbonar

Just a thought...

I wonder if the polititicians are getting royalties or other payment bungs off the privatised companies..... Now that would explain a great deal.

Breaking news the Old people homes ...rip offs (privatised services)

teddyco

This is just one more reason to GET LABOUR OUT!

bunking_off

I work in regulation in telecoms and struggle to see why a setup similar to that wouldn't work in the posal market..there's massive parallels between the two.

There are parts of the postal service which are natural monopolies. The delivery network springs to mind. These can be either left in the public sector, or put in the private sector and regulated heavily (price regulation to ensure efficiency). There are other parts which are competitive, so allowed more freedom/competition. There's no reason why these competitive bits should be in public hands.

In telecoms, Openreach own the telephone lines which are a natural monopoly, but the calls market is competitive. As it happens, Openreach is owned by BT, but that's an accident of history and most would say "we wouldn't have started from this situation".

Point is, BT is in private hands, but there's still universal service, and still harmonised pricing (don't get charged more to ring Scottish Islands than to call large cities). Competitive pressures ensure that, but if it didn't regulation could make it happen...e.g. Openreach's regulated pricing that communications providers (including BT) have to pay is set to ensure universal provision.

So why not have competitive provision of postal services, with a monopoly regulated or state-owned delivery network?

BT are in a bit of mess financially now, but compared to the bloated mess they were pre-privatisation, they're very efficient...think in terms of perhaps 70% reduction in staff. Some of that has been down to technology change, but not all of it. And if you don't like BT there's plenty of other choice. I believe the same could apply to the postal service...it's a labour intensive activity (particularly the delivery network) so the efficiency savings that BT achieved couldn't be done, but there's some horrendous spanish practises go on (my old boss used to work over there and some of his tales would make your hair curl). It's just regretable that the companies that seem up to the job of rationalising the business all seem to be foreign.

mcgazz

B *and* C, and I suppose A. Anything which has a natural monopoly (and we only need one network or Post Offices, postboxes, etc) works better in public ownership. It's not ideology, it's logic.

JamPot

The major problem with Royal Mail is one of modernisation. Look at any commercial-run mailing facility (DHL, Deutsche Post) and the sorting of mail which can be mechanised almost totally is being run by handful of staff. This is not a labour intensive operation, but at the RM it is.

Management had the opportunities back in the 1960s with the mechanisation of mail sorting using postcodes to bring in this type of operation over time but failed to do so - poor management and leadership has lead us to the position today that RM barely can keep its head consistently above water.

If the Unions want to keep members in work they need to focus on the one part of the service the machine cannot do - delivery. Here they could use more staff I am sure.

Of course the major problem for the RM is what business is it in - they think its delivering letters. In truth they are in the communications business and their strategic plans should have addressed this years ago...

It may still be too late.