Todays Daily Mail (25th Jan 2024)

[KayGeeExOPG]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum, as per my introduction yesterday.

I notice that RM are heavily featured in todays Daily Mail newspaper, on the front page (bottom half, revert your eyes from the top half lads!) and page4 and 14. Well worth a read, I think.

KG.

[Basildon Bond]

I found this one (I don't pay for a Daily Mail paper nor online but there are ways)...

ROSS CLARK: Crippled by strikes and poor management, the Royal Mail has failed to behave like a proper private company. Its demise is an affront to the British people

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... eople.html

By ROSS CLARK

PUBLISHED: 13:11 GMT, 24 January 2024 | UPDATED: 13:11 GMT, 24 January 2024

Back in 2011, the Royal Mail was privatised – ending almost five centuries of being run by the state.

Under its universal service obligation, the new company made a clear promise: to continue delivering letters to every address in the United Kingdom, six days a week.

In return, the Royal Mail was given a charmed deal that no other privatised company had been granted before, and which should have given it a flying start: it was relieved of historic pension liabilities, which remained with the taxpayer.

In short, you and I continued to cough up for Postman Pat’s pension, even as the cost of using his services soared: since 2011, the price of a first class stamp has leapt from 46p to a whacking £1.25 today as the number of letters being sent fell.

Well, it’s now manifestly clear that the giveaway privatisation has ripped us all off.

Shamefully, the Royal Mail is trying to wriggle out the deal it struck just a few years ago.

And to make matters worse, Ofcom – the government regulator that oversees post deliveries – appears to be taking its side.

A new Ofcom report has set out a number of shoddy options that will now be ‘consulted upon’ – all of which would short-change the public.

Under one option, Saturday deliveries could be cancelled altogether, saving the Royal Mail up to £200million a year.

Under an alternative and even more shocking plan, deliveries could be reduced to three days a week, saving the company up to £650million a year.

A third and especially lamentable option would be to ensure that only ‘the majority of letters’ are delivered within three days – effectively abolishing first class post and telling us all to lower our expectations.

Again, this could save the company up to £650million a year.

One of the big savings from this move, incidentally, would be in avoiding Ofcom fines. Last year the regulator fined Royal Mail £5.6million for its pathetic performance in meeting targets.

To allow the Royal Mail to betray the terms of its agreement on such an extraordinary scale is nothing less than an affront to the British people.

Whether or not we still post regular letters to friends and family, all of us still rely on the postal service – and not the internet – for important written communications such as delivering bank cards and bill reminders.

Can Royal Mail sink any lower? Already, it manages to deliver less than three-quarters (73.7 per cent) of first class letters, and 90.7 per cent of second class letters, on time. (Its targets are 93 per cent and 98.5 per cent respectively.)

In several rural areas, the post has been delivered just once a fortnight, leading some people to miss hospital appointments. An undercover investigation has meanwhile found that staff at sorting offices were tossing first class letters aside so that they could prioritise more lucrative parcels.

So this latest shoddy report, which would see a historic British institution further devalued and bad service further entrenched, is perhaps unsurprising.

Ofcom claims that the reforms are inevitable. The number of letters being sent through the post has halved since 2011 alone - from 14.3billion to 7.3billion and could fall to just four billion within five years..

If the Royal Mail were better run, it could have seized on the opportunities offered in the parcels business: millions more are being shipped amid the rise in online shopping.

Instead, the company lost £750million in the year to last March, allowing Amazon and private courier firms like Evri and DPD to steal its lunch.

Why has it failed on such a catastrophic scale?

To me, the answer is clear. You can take the company out of the public sector, but it is a lot harder to take the public sector out of the company.

Royal Mail retains the poor management and poisonous industrial relations from its time as a state-run organisation, and remains crippled by frequent strikes.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary who oversaw the privatisation during the coalition years, said during the financial crisis: ‘We cannot have a situation where the banks are able to privatise their profits and nationalise their losses.’

Yet this is precisely what he did in his botched privatisation – and now all of us are suffering the results.

[KayGeeExOPG]

Basildon Bond, hello there. YES, I do agree with most of what you say here, in some detail. Pretty much what is written on page 14 of todays Daily Mail newspaper (including the "You can take the company out of the public sector, but it is a lot harder to take the public sector out of the company." quote you have repeated here, a pretty good summary of the RM saga.
What also puzzles me, is that amongst the rest of us mere mortals, central Government themselves, need a reliable, efficient, and daily running postal service for themselves and their departments! For this reason alone, they should be doing all they can (and MUCH earlier than the sudden announcement from Rishi Sunack this week) to back and support RM. But of course, this also means basic budgeting sense, in the form of, cutting out some of the outrageously overpaid management and exec management!! Too many chiefs and not enough indians?

Incidently, there is a share philosophy here that some seem to miss. I think that it is a good principle to practice, by anybody who works for, or cares about, Royal Mail, to encourage society today to continue to use physical 'PAPER' services, such as the physical paper post by Royal Mail. This is exactly why I myself, buy actual paper newspapers, as it is a good advertisement to encourage others to do the same? I notice that you said you do not believe in buying newspapers? I found myself a good deal subscription, and happy to be paying and supporting a simular 'physical' service. In fact furthermore, Royal Mail NEEDS custom from the newspaper industry does it not, sending physical publications in the post, regardless of whether technology has moved on or not.

KG.

[pinstripe]

An undercover investigation has meanwhile found that staff at sorting offices were tossing first class letters aside so that they could prioritise more lucrative parcels.

That implies it was the staffs decision to prioritise “more lucrative parcels”, which is wrong. Staff work as directed.

To many people, especially those that write for and read that publication blame the posties for the poor decisions made by the board and senior management.

Finally, it has to be said, we have not been on strike for over a year, a point continually omitted by the press and Royal Mail

[qwerty2]

An undercover investigation has meanwhile found that staff at sorting offices were tossing first class letters aside so that they could prioritise more lucrative parcels.

That implies it was the staffs decision to prioritise “more lucrative parcels”, which is wrong. Staff work as directed.

To many people, especially those that write for and read that publication blame the posties for the poor decisions made by the board and senior management.

Finally, it has to be said, we have not been on strike for over a year, a point continually omitted by the press and Royal Mail

The public and media are ignorant - haven’t got a clue what we do

[hazzeem025]

Another frankly pathetic article in the Daily Mail, written by someone who hasn't got a f***ing clue. Another brown nosing Tory fan boy trotting out the same old militants unions blah blah line.

Well Mr s**t Journo, the only people to blame for the mess Royal Mail is in are Keith William's (Chairman) and the bunch of idiots on the board. They employed Thompson, McPherson, Brown etc : those people are the ones that nearly bankrupted R.M, while trying to blame it on the CWU members. So get your story right you sad little Boris worshipper.

[borders]

[TopperGas]

"and remains crippled by frequent strikes."

How many strikes have RM had in the last 5 years, reading that it sounds like we were BL in the 70's, walking out on a regular basis.

[nuisance]

Yeah, "crippled by strikes", which had absolutely zero effect since we didn't manage to delay the mail or non-tracked packets as much as RM opt to themselves.

At the time, I couldn't get my head around why RM were so keen on baiting strikes, but I suppose this is it; so they, and the media, can use the workforce as a permanent scapegoat to pin the blame on for their (completely engineered, deliberate) total crapness.

[KayGeeExOPG]

I agree that, as with most major companies that sail into difficult waters, it is the hard working workforce, and the paying customer who provides the actual business in the first place, that suffer the most, and tolerate the nonsense and bad ideas, that come from the exec management at the top of the hierachy, in the form of bad ideas, poorly thought out decisions, bad directives and poorly calculated risks. Those at the receiving end, who have a duty of care to themselves, which for them, is the whole point of employment in the first place (something that Exec's often seem to neglect), are bound to react and object to increasingly difficult conditions, such as reducing the working week, which is a crazy idea, esp for a badly needed public service! I think it is almost laughable, that suddenly in an election year, our unelected PM Rishi is suddenly announcing that he and his government care oh so very much about maintaining effective services from RM. He and his government have had so many ignored chances to do much more, to help steer the ship securely in the right direction, and demonstrate that his government do care about the hardworking shipmates that run the operation, and address the various incompetence it's exec's have inflicted through poor decisions and unwise risks in it's business model for the good of all. I don't see anything useful yet from this failing government that is convincing, in resolving this crisis.
However, on the topic of politics, I will say that as I see it, whether right-wing or left-wing, whether 'far' or 'near' from the political centre, political bias and ideology does not really come into this discussion, simply because both are equally capable, and have demonstrated so over the decades, of managing business and it's strategy, badly. Regardless of whichever bias or ideological narrative is being claimed as being 'better' for whoever, bad business tactics and resources management, plus greed, is simply and factually is what it is. Bad. A bad deal for everyone else below them in the tree. I can remember a time when 'the top dog' in an organisation, was carefully selected mutually by representatives throughout the organisation, based on merit, abilities, excellent responsible business sense, and what used to be known as 'for the common good'. I fear those days are gone, and the public will 'vote with their feet' and walk elsewhere for services.