Royal Mail to be privatised or sold, government says

lynzpower

marklv wrote: »

Loads of people still post letters, you arrogant lawyer p-r-i-c-k.

Privatising RM will mean mail being delivered less frequently (i.e. twice a week probably if you are a residential address), more mail being lost or stolen and higher delivery prices.

In fairness, private delivery services work very well in the US, but only because the infrastructure has been around for ages and the companies can make economies of scale when in such a huge market. In the UK they will struggle to deliver at competitive prices.

Actually I was watching a CNN report about this last week and americans are striking as thier national postal service is to be sold off/ privatised.

TNT and other national private carriers simply dont post or deliver to rural locations, as its not profitable. Americans are looking to how the UK runs the postal service NOW as a model for what they want to do instead of a total privatisation.

I receive on average about 5 pieces of mail per day. Some of it is junk, but most of it isnt.

Bullfighter

lemonjelly wrote: »

This deserves being put into 10 foot high letters.

The answer is PFI or getting the private sector to do it my a r s e!

If a private sector is carrying out a public duty for a public body, they will only be doing so at a profit.
What does that mean? It means they are taking taxpayers money out of the system.
Why more people do not think this is wrong I do not understand!

Since when is posting a letter a public duty?

lynzpower

Bullfighter wrote: »

Since when is posting a letter a public duty?

Ask that to the DWP who send everything by post.

Lotus-eater

LydiaJ wrote: »

What would happen if they removed the RM monopoly, but made it so that no carrier, courier or any other company could be licensed to operate unless they provided universal service for the whole of the UK (including any islands etc that are covered by RM) at a flat rate? I don't just mean that they have to deliver to anywhere in the UK, but that nobody in the UK should be more than x miles from a place where you can post things and the company will collect it reasonably often. Suppose it included parcels etc - anything and everything up to, say, 10kg.

I think RM might be much better able to compete if the playing field was level.

While I agree it would be fairer, how on earth would that work and why?
So you have 2 private companies doing the complete postal service, along with a state owned company? Why?

Why would we want a state owned company competing against other companies which have to make a profit.

The reason in my mind to have a state owned company, is to do the complete service no one else wants to do. And I don't think they should have to make a profit, they are providing a service, which is why British Rail should have worked very well and it didn't matter to me if we subsidised it, the same way mainland European countries subsidise their railways and have excellent services, which put ours to shame.

Either we have a monopoly on mail and we run the company well and properly (we we can't because of dinosaur unions), it shouldn't have to make a profit, or there is no point having a state owned PO.

The unions are destroying the RM, only they are too thick to see it, that time has gone.

leew

Royal Mail are now making a profit due to the modernisation programme that has been rolled out, think it was something like 400+ million so strange timing really.

LydiaJ

Lotus-eater wrote: »

While I agree it would be fairer, how on earth would that work and why?
So you have 2 private companies doing the complete postal service, along with a state owned company? Why?

Why would we want a state owned company competing against other companies which have to make a profit.

The reason in my mind to have a state owned company, is to do the complete service no one else wants to do. And I don't think they should have to make a profit, they are providing a service, which is why British Rail should have worked very well and it didn't matter to me if we subsidised it, the same way mainland European countries subsidise their railways and have excellent services, which put ours to shame.

Either we have a monopoly on mail and we run the company well and properly (we we can't because of dinosaur unions), it shouldn't have to make a profit, or there is no point having a state owned PO.

The unions are destroying the RM, only they are too thick to see it, that time has gone.

Exactly. It would be pointless to have more than one company trying to provide a universal service. That's why I phrased it as "what would happen if..." rather than "I think they should..." It was only meant to be hypothetical.

But as long as RM is obliged to provide a universal service and its competitors aren't, then it's simplistic to think that its failure to make a profit (whether past or present) is solely down to the fact that it's state owned and its competitors aren't. That's not comparing like with like. When they removed the parcels monopoly from RM, they were basically allowing other companies to come in and cream off some profitable activities while leaving RM with the obligation to keep providing the rest of the service, and then wonder why it wasn't doing so well. Surely we all know that delivering things short distances within major cities is supposed to subsidise RM's loss-making activities delivering stuff in remote rural areas. RM needs a fair chance to keep its market share of the things that generate money, at a price that still gives it enough margin to subsidise the more expensive bits. The fact that private companies could and would undercut the easy bits while not having to bother with the difficult bits would screw the system if the monopoly was taken away.

Personally I am well aware that I don't know enough about all the issues to know whether privatising RM is a good idea, but I'm inclined to suspect that it isn't. Private companies are in business to make money, as they should be. The country needs to have a universal post service, and I wouldn't trust a private company to safeguard the quality of the universal service any further than the absolute minimum its regulators would let it get away with, and that worries me.

My gut feeling is that privatisation is not a universal panacea for eliminating inefficiency. It tends to give more power and influence (and salary) to bean counters and less to the actual service providers, and wastes vast amounts of time and energy fiddling with the money side of things instead of concentrating on the actual work that the company is there to do. It annoys me that the so-called utility companies are referred to as such. They're nothing to do with any actual gas or electricity - they just do the billing for it.

I cannot see any point in privatising something that remains a monopoly. It doesn't have the influence of competition to force it to be more cost efficient, but it has to generate a profit for its shareholders - how is that better value for money. My nephew (who cannot be guaranteed 100% accurate but seemed to know what he was talking about) was telling me only last month that his primary school is very limited in the activities it can provide for children in the evenings (putting on a school play etc) because the PFI company that built it charges so much for evening use of the premises. Yeah, PFI is doing a really great job for his education, isn't it??????

[/rant]
Lydia (works in the private sector, but in education, where the finance staff come under the category of "support staff" rather than "management", which is how it should be IMO)

custardy

Lotus-eater wrote: »

While I agree it would be fairer, how on earth would that work and why?
So you have 2 private companies doing the complete postal service, along with a state owned company? Why?

Why would we want a state owned company competing against other companies which have to make a profit.

The reason in my mind to have a state owned company, is to do the complete service no one else wants to do. And I don't think they should have to make a profit, they are providing a service, which is why British Rail should have worked very well and it didn't matter to me if we subsidised it, the same way mainland European countries subsidise their railways and have excellent services, which put ours to shame.

Either we have a monopoly on mail and we run the company well and properly (we we can't because of dinosaur unions), it shouldn't have to make a profit, or there is no point having a state owned PO.

The unions are destroying the RM, only they are too thick to see it, that time has gone.

dont fall for the hype that all thats wrong with RM is down to the unions

olly300

BLT wrote: »

I don't think it will impact much on many of us. Pretty much everything is done online these days. I do get lots of junk mail through the post, maybe this would reduce if it became pricier to send.

I can not think of a single thing, apart from a few ebay packages, where the post actually impinges on my life.

Where I live there are lots of people who run businesses from home or are self-employed. They rely on Royal Mail to deliver documents and small packages.

Yes you can deal with lots of things via email and by fax but unfortunately there are still documents and small packages that you have to receive by post.

BLT wrote: »

Even birthday cards are emailed these days

That's fine for adults of certain ages but not for children under 8 when you are teaching them to celebrate important occasions for other people and manners i.e. thank you cards.

olly300

leew wrote: »

Royal Mail are now making a profit due to the modernisation programme that has been rolled out, think it was something like 400+ million so strange timing really.

It's the large pension deficit that's the problem caused by government (of all political parties) mis-management.

olly300

Lotus-eater wrote: »

The unions are destroying the RM, only they are too thick to see it, that time has gone.

There is a massive management problem in RM.