UK Gov't Outlines Plans To Privatize Royal Mail 220
Ellie K writes "After 500 years, Britain announced plans to fully privatize Royal Mail today. Shares of stock (common equity) will be offered to the public 'in coming weeks', according to Reuters. 10% of shares will be given to current Royal Mail employees, Deal size is estimated at $US 3 to 4.7 billion. Goldman Sachs and UBS were chosen as lead advisers." That doesn't mean you'll be able to buy a piece tomorrow, though; as the BBC's report notes, "The plans have provoked strong opposition from unions. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is currently balloting members on strike action. Ballot papers are due to go out on 20 September to 125,000 Royal Mail workers. The earliest possible strike date would be 10 October. Plans to privatise the 250-year-old postal service have been on successive governments' agendas since the early 1990s."
fattening the cow (Score:5, Informative)
The RM has already been broken up and sold off in stages, each made worse:
- PO Telephones became British Telecom became British Telecom Plc. in the '80s.
- Post Offices are barely even owned by one company any more, with each outlet acting as an independent contractor.
- Much of the post is processed by private firms which get the profitable work, while RM is stuck with the last mile, and all the unprofitable routes.
- All the above has meant typical public-private partnership inefficiency, such that the price of sending letters has gone up recently way above the rate of inflation - with special increases in the last two years to reflect fattening of the cow for sale.
Just another ideological move by a country slipping down into oblivion. Will make a few people rich, though. I expect China will be interested in a piece of the pie - it's been buying up a few British infrastructure companies recently. They know how to manipulate "capitalism" all the way to the bank.
Re:fattening the cow (Score:4, Informative)
Compare your thriving market to you much closer neighbors. Way to cherry pick the worst possible folks to compare against.
Re:fattening the cow (Score:5, Informative)
Oh fuck I don't even know where to begin with the kind of egocentricity which comes down to "one time one service didn't deliver for me therefore DESTROY IT ALL because the alternatives will surely be better".
Followed by a link to a Daily Mail article, which is as a reliable as a link to a BNP article.
Have you actually tried to contract with a truly privatised, subdivided, "free market" style delivery service, like Yodel? They are so fucking awful it's an insult that they're even permitted to operate.
USPS setup for failure (Score:5, Informative)
In 2006, the US Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act", which mandated $5.5 billion per year to be paid into an account to pre-fund retiree health-care, 75 years into the future.
Since none of USPS's competitors (Fedex, UPS etc) are required to do this, USPS has essentially been setup to fail & then be privatized.
Re:fattening the cow (Score:1, Informative)
'And we now have a thriving competitive market ' - said by someone who has clearly never used BT or Virgin & who has never looked at their broadband bill.
'If you want to know what's idealogical it is the opposition to any privatisation on the grounds that private industry will automatically make things worse.'
BT - one of the worse companies in Western Europe
British Gas - pretty bad
The railways - overpriced and hated worse than British Rail
Council services - dreadful & still council tax shoots up
Electricity - owned by foreigners, terrible service, high bills
Water - huge bills, useless companies, also mainly owned by foreign multinationals
The scumbags who do government medical exams to deny people welfare - utter vermin
G4 and their various government contracts - hahahahahaha
Not a very good record really. Am sure there are many others I haven't listed.
Re:fattening the cow (Score:5, Informative)
That pretty much describes it. Every public service that was privatised here in Portugal followed the same route. They used to be public services, now they're huge private monopolies that make gigantic profits, bully customers like they're shit and crush any shred of competition that may arise.
We have the most fanatic neoliberal government of all times. They should hang pictures of Rand, Hayek and Friedman over their desks and salute them when they enter the office every morning, in the (not so unfamiliar) Fascist style.
The supreme irony: They recently privatised what was left of our state electricity company. Guess who bought it? A state-owned Chinese company! So, according to the Supreme Dogma of the Holy Free Market, our state can't have a presence in our economy, but the Chinese state can!
Re:USPS setup for failure (Score:2, Informative)
Since the USPS never had to request money from the government except during election time to pay for the overseas ballots from our military since 1981, I would say fat chance on that.
The US Post office was a shining example of government running something right. The service was more than acceptable, cheap and the employees were paid great and not only that, this "Not-For-Profit" company was actually MAKING more than it was spending until that bastardized law was passed. The business companies couldn't allow that so they paid to have it fixed, in the veterinary since of the word.
They privatize it, I will NEVER use it again. But you can and I hope you enjoy it in 10 years when your $50 bill costs you $10 to mail while your postal workers pay has dropped from $18-35 down to about $1 over minimum wage with all his benefits dropping as fast as you can name them but some CEO and shareholders making money hand over fist. After adjusting these numbers for inflation of course.
Lets put it this way, you could take Walmart, force these same regulations on them today, by next week they would be filling for bankruptcy and running from the US or ANY nation as fast as they could.