Why the lib-dems are shit

[ymu]

Very true. But for letters, the original purpose of the Royal Mail, it's a very different question. Who needs a written bill or statement when it can be emailed? And there's plenty of competition in the parcel delivery sector.

What the fuck does the original purpose of the Royal Mail have to do with anything?

Parcel delivery is mostly done by RM, even if private couriers collected it and got it to their depot. It's a large part of the problem - they're creaming off the profit whilst RM does the work.

 

[Quartz]

lots of people don't use email

But sufficient do to make a difference.

Parcel delivery is mostly done by RM, even if private couriers collected it and got it to their depot. It's a large part of the problem - they're creaming off the profit whilst RM does the work.

Ah. I wasn't aware of that. But that leads to the question that if it's not profitable for the RM to do this work, why aren't they charging a profitable price? Unless, of course, they want to be privatised... But the Tories and Lib Dems haven't been in power that long, so it must be RM upper management looking for huge bonuses / share options / other payoff from their new masters.

 

[butchersapron]

They legally have to deliver parcels and post from third parties at a price that undercuts themselves. The market was rigged against them. Removal of downstream access rights should be the immediate first step. Not privatisation. To see just how weak the lib-dems case for privatisation is, and how ideologically driven do have a quick look at the Compass counter-report to the Hooper report: Case Not Made. (pdf warning).

 

[ymu]

@ Quartz

Yes, the plan has long been to farm out the profitable bits to the private sector and weaken RM so badly that full privatisation would be easy. Please don't say this surprises you. Adam Crozier was brought in for precisely this purpose.

 

[_angel_]

Yep. When I was in Brum I could take the bus in to work but there were no buses home. In Oxford, it takes an hour and a quarter to get 8 miles, by any one of three different methods (two of them involving a park & ride despite the availability of bus stops close by, and the other taking even longer if I don't fork out double for an all companies bus ticket). And that's starting from a major affordable housing suburb to a major employment suburb, and the destination is a big hospital on the same site as all the other big hospitals in town. It's fucking ridiculous.

Oxford was considerably better than other places I've lived too!!! You should try bus commuting in Leeds (don't)

 

[ymu]

Oxford was considerably better than other places I've lived too!!! You should try bus commuting in Leeds (don't)

Oxford buses are brilliant for students and anyone who lives or works right in the centre. Shit for everyone else.

 

[Quartz]

Yes, the plan has long been to farm out the profitable bits to the private sector and weaken RM so badly that full privatisation would be easy. Please don't say this surprises you.

It does, alas, surprise me. But that's because I haven't been paying attention to the goings on in the Royal Mail. It also surprises me in general because we've had a Labour government for the past 13 years.

 

[ymu]

You don't pay attention at all do you? What the fuck does having a Labour government have to do with anything?

 

[_angel_]

Oxford buses are brilliant for students and anyone who lives or works right in the centre. Shit for everyone else.

Did you mean getting buses out of Oxford into Oxfordshire?
Tbh I found walking quicker than waiting for the two-bus-nightmare.
Leeds is still about a million times worse for buses, anyway, they don't even have the pretence of competition (ie more than one bus firm running each line).

 

[ymu]

Did you mean getting buses out of Oxford into Oxfordshire?
Tbh I found walking quicker than waiting for the two-bus-nightmare.
Leeds is still about a million times worse for buses, anyway, they don't even have the pretence of competition (ie more than one bus firm running each line).

No. I mean it is quick to get from Kidlington to town, and from town to Headington. But to get from Kidlington to Headington (8 miles) is a nightmare. The buses don't use the ring road - they go into town and stop, and the bus-stops are a few minutes walk apart since they pedestrianised the corn market. And if you don't buy a more expensive all-companies ticket, it's a fair old wait for the right bus to Headington to come along.

 

[Quartz]

You don't pay attention at all do you? What the fuck does having a Labour government have to do with anything?

Because it was under them that these unfair practices were going on. They could have corrected it but didn't.

 

[ymu]

Because it was under them that these unfair practices were going on. They could have corrected it but didn't.

Wut? Why would they do that? They planned it. Crozier was their man.

 

[Streathamite]

Because it was under them that these unfair practices were going on. They could have corrected it but didn't.

did you honestly - I mean, really?- hope for that from a govt headed up by Blair?
I'm simply staggered.

 

[Quartz]

did you honestly - I mean, really?- hope for that from a govt headed up by Blair?
I'm simply staggered.

Perhaps you shouldn't be drinking so much?

I wasn't looking into it at the time. My knowledge is still perforce limited, but given that it was happening then, to turn around and blame it on the Lib Dems and Tories is a bit rich. Now, I happen to think that they're idiots for not stopping it, but to blame them for it in the first place is not right. A public postal service is something that benefits this country greatly. The Royal Mail is needed to ensure delivery of HMG communications like tax returns, census forms, polling cards, etc. And since the postal network needs to be in place for that, it makes sense for it to be open to all. So I'm against privatisation. To whom do I write?

 

[ymu]

Write to all the rich people who control government and tell them that they've made a terrible mistake. You could copy it to Vince Cable, even. They probably weren't aware of the issues when they decided policy. If you tell them, it'll make a world of difference.

 

[Quartz]

Write to all ...

Hear that whooshing sound?

 

[the button]

A leading union was today organising a mass meeting after Birmingham city council told almost 26,000 staff they could lose their jobs under plans to slash spending.

Stephen Hughes, the chief executive of the country's largest local authority, sent legal notices to the council's entire non-schools staff – covering everyone from street sweepers to clerks, carers, and cleaners – warning them that they will receive new contracts imposing cuts in pay and conditions.

Failure to accept the new deals will result in dismissal from the council, run by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration.

News of the move – an effort to save £330m by 2014 – emerged on the day the TUC backed a mass political and industrial campaign against government spending cuts, with joint industrial action taken wherever possible.

The GMB's Birmingham & West Midlands regional officer, Joe Morgan, said: "The workers have been told that if they don't accept new contracts they will be dismissed and re-engaged on worse conditions.

"The council's chief executive is acting like a school bully by saying that workers have to accept this or they will be sacked without compensation. Our members are in shock and are up in arms."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/13/birmingham-council-staff-notice-contracts

 

[moon23]

Are the Utilitites some tribe in the bible which we exterminated? Maybe that's why Moron23 is so obsessed with conspiracies.

I dislike conspiracy theories.

 

[moon23]

Perhaps you shouldn't be drinking so much?

I wasn't looking into it at the time. My knowledge is still perforce limited, but given that it was happening then, to turn around and blame it on the Lib Dems and Tories is a bit rich. Now, I happen to think that they're idiots for not stopping it, but to blame them for it in the first place is not right. A public postal service is something that benefits this country greatly. The Royal Mail is needed to ensure delivery of HMG communications like tax returns, census forms, polling cards, etc. And since the postal network needs to be in place for that, it makes sense for it to be open to all. So I'm against privatisation. To whom do I write?

The Royal Mail has had problems for years, a huge pensions defecit and failure to make a profit. It's the least profitable mail company out of all of it's western counterparts, Deutsche Post (Germany) and TNT (Netherlands) achieved profit margins of 13% and 15% from their mail operations. Something needs to be done about it and Labour didn't solve this problem with their 13 years in power so perhaps the Coaliton will make a better go of it.

 

[fractionMan]

by selling it off. brilliant moon, brilliant.

 

[Open Sauce]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/13/birmingham-council-staff-notice-contracts

Stephen Hughes, the chief executive of the country's largest local authority, sent legal notices to the council's entire non-schools staff – covering everyone from street sweepers to clerks, carers, and cleaners – warning them that they will receive new contracts imposing cuts in pay and conditions.

Everyone?

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/...cil-chief-executive-to-resign-65233-27254725/

Mr Hughes who, on a salary of about £220,000, is one of the country’s highest paid local government officials.

He'll probably get a bonus

 

[butchersapron]

The Royal Mail has had problems for years, a huge pensions defecit and failure to make a profit. It's the least profitable mail company out of all of it's western counterparts, Deutsche Post (Germany) and TNT (Netherlands) achieved profit margins of 13% and 15% from their mail operations. Something needs to be done about it and Labour didn't solve this problem with their 13 years in power so perhaps the Coaliton will make a better go of it.

Every word of this post is an ill-informed lie. Let's see your workings moon.

 

[Sue]

Have I missed 'held the country to ransom' and 'bodies lying unburied in the streets'?

 

[butchersapron]

He actually did use those last week. I kid you not.

 

[Sue]

I'd expect nothing less...

 

[butchersapron]

Coalition -8% tonight. 37% approve and 45% disapprove

 

[Brainaddict]

The Royal Mail has had problems for years, a huge pensions defecit and failure to make a profit. It's the least profitable mail company out of all of it's western counterparts, Deutsche Post (Germany) and TNT (Netherlands) achieved profit margins of 13% and 15% from their mail operations. Something needs to be done about it and Labour didn't solve this problem with their 13 years in power so perhaps the Coaliton will make a better go of it.

As I understand it, the Royal Mail is required to do things that cannot and will never be profitable, such as delivering to remote rural areas, having postboxes in small villages etc. The things that are very profitable, such as parcel post, have already been opened to competition, cutting the Royal Mails profits on them and thus their ability to cross-subsidise the services that can never make a profit. So they are a public service organisation who in their most profitable parts are required to compete with private companies that do not have to do anything at all that is unprofitable (i.e provide certain necessary public services). That is why they look 'inefficient' to people who don't know what they're talking about.

If they are privatised, the company that runs it will hold the taxpayer to ransom by saying 'either we cut these unprofitable services that keep communities afloat, or you give us more money'. To save face and because their friends will be running the private company, the government will hand over the money, and we'll end up with another privatised service as brilliantly 'efficient' as the railways.

 

[slake]

Logically the only people who should support privatisation of the Royal Mail should be those who will somehow gain from it - such as shareholders of the companies that will feast on the carve up. Anyone who thinks service will improve in any way what so ever is an idiot. I work for a business to business parcel deliver company and if the cowboys who are running us into the ground get a hold of any part of Royal Mail / Parcelforce then god help us all.

 

[moon23]

Every word of this post is an ill-informed lie. Let's see your workings moon.

The stats and facts I got from the Independant Hooper report. Is this information incorrect? Can you show me why?

 

[butchersapron]

Well for a start Royal Mail does make a profit, so that's point #1 gone straightaway. Secondly the basis of the Hooper Report (which i don't for a second believe you're read) comparisons with DP and TNT is fatally flawed as it fails to take into account factors such as pricing (RM delivers more from more post boxes cheaper than either DP or TNT -and 88% of these delivery's are price-regulated for example). The Compass report Case Not Made (pdf) makes clear Hooper's failure to make a like for like comparison (size, employment, legacy issues and so on). The CWU's response does the same - as does the Neal Lawson report Modernisation by Consent.

Each of these counter-reports also makes clear that profit margins are not the correct way in which to judge the social utility of services such as Royal Mail. This will, i know, be lost on you. Read these - not just a paper with an agendas cherry picked 'fact' - then come back.

If you have an ounce of seriousness or concern for public welfare in you you will read at least one of these reports (the CWU one is best) with an open mind and not the dogmatic utopian perspective that has taken hold of you over the last year.