[admin]

We all know why it is a bad idea to privatise public services. The purpose of a public service is to serve the public and the purpose of a private company is to make profits for its shareholders. It doesn't need genius to see that the two are opposing interests. So why is it being done? Because politicians are in the pockets of private interest? Yes, basically one could put it this way. But how they sell it to us is the interesting part I want to focus on here. The part-privatisation (it was never called that) of the UK Royal Mail has only just disappeared from the headlines (for now). For weeks we were told how we need the cash and expertise of the private sector because Royal Mail wasn't performing well and needed reforming and bringing into the 21st century. A non-UK company was the preferred bidder.
So what's the problem with Royal Mail?

Before we try to answer this let us look at the entertaining race which the extremely popular BBC motoring programme Top Gear just broadcast. Two of the presenters paid £0.39 for a first class stamp and posted it from an island in the very South West of the UK to a village on another island in the North Eastern most corner of the country. Royal Mail say they deliver a first class letter the very next day anywhere in the UK. So the BBC presenters jumped into a Porsche and drove all day and through the night in an attempt to beat the letter. LOL Meanwhile the letter made its way through the 24hr postal system on vans, lorries and several planes. When the guys finally arrived at the letter's destination, the letter was already there.

So what IS wrong with Royal Mail? The answer is of course: Nothing! Apart maybe from the fact that it is too cheap to post things and that the Brits think their postal system is crap (because that's what they are being told). But when I left Germany 10 years ago, mail was more expensive and it normally took 3 days for a letter to arrive and I assume this is still the case. Yes! The mega-efficient Germans!
£0.39 for such a service, are you kidding? And what is it that needs brining into the 21st century? How much more efficient can you get?

But the way to privatisation is always the same. Starve the service of funding, make it appear like tax payers are not getting a good service and then pretend that privatisation is the only way forward. What Royal Mail needs is be tax-payer owned, retain a monopoly, charge fair prices (by this I mean more!). If we stopped spending billions on buying banks' debts, on nuclear deterrent, on wars against civilians abroad for the benefit of private oil interests and on all the spying on law-abiding citizens, we would have plenty for all sorts of public services, which is what the money is really there for.