Slicing Up The Royal Mail

[johnnyp]

http://www.hellmail.co.uk/postalnews/te ... &zoneid=10
Slicing Up The Royal Mail

11 September 2008 by Steve Lawson - © Hellmail.co.uk




"The butcher with the sharpest knife ... has the warmest heart." - a quote from the TV series 'The Prisoner.'

Whichever way one slices and dices it, postal liberlisation, a declining business and rising fuel costs have hit Royal Mail hard and none harder than those working at sorting offices in the north-west of England.

Royal Mail is standing firmly behind it's decision to axe hundreds of jobs as it embarks on a radical pruning back of an infrastructure that has until recent years, provided an almost wall-to-wall service. Not only can Royal Mail no longer afford to keep them open, it now has to chase the money, and that money is in sorting business mail on a big scale - not in the universal service which is likely to report another loss this year.

Royal Mail has for some time now, been losing key contracts to rivals who can sort mail faster and cheaper, and armed with a modernisation loan from the government that is now burning a hole in it's pocket, Royal Mail urgently needs to reform the way it operates - and fast.

The CWU have made plenty of noise about the changes going on at Royal Mail but both the union and it's workforce experienced first hand last year, just what it was up against and soon realised it was no match for the might of the EU liberalisation plan. It is faceless and unstoppable.

Postcomm, the regulator has effectively been in the middle of an overbearing sandwich between a union-entrenched workforce, a nonchalant government, EU policy, and competitors claiming Royal Mail has the advantage, and with a postal service that was in no way ready for commercialism, Postcomm was unlikely to make friends or make a real success of encouraging greater choice for consumers either. Postwatch, which has seemingly now abandoned even it's online blog, is about to disappear into the shadows leaving consumers to elbow their way through the switchboard of a new multi-complaint consumer body.

The next phase will undoubtedly be separation of the pension deficit from Royal Mail's perceived value, and a very probable slicing up of Royal Mail assets to encourage investment from the private sector. Postcomm has recommended it and Royal Mail is all for it. If anyone was hoping to keep Royal Mail as a self-financing public service, they certainly wouldn't start here.

To further complicate things, the UK is heading towards possibly a prolonged recession, it has a prime minister who few have a kind word to say about, and trade unions insisting that Alistair Darling should be taxing the rich more to help those being hit by rising fuel and food costs. Threats of industrial action by unions to force the government to push pay rises beyond the 2% are likely to make matters even worse politically.

As with so many policies like this, there is unlikely to be any acknowledgement of failure from anyone, or if there is, it will be something along the lines of "in hindsight" from some previously unknown spokesperson wearing a Homer Simpson tie, and that will be that.

The most annoying thing in all of this is that Postwatch's role has been ineffective where it most mattered and whilst it admirably served its purpose as a kind of glorified citizens advice bureau (and to be honest I know citizens advice bureaus that are more forthright), it was soon evident that no one had any say in closures or the cropping back of postal services in general and whilst local Postwatch representatives were very supportive, their lack of power or ability to veto anything, made it a costly and fruitless exercise for all concerned. We can't even guarantee that all these 'main-in-a-van' outreach services will last for any length of time.

Those wearing the suits and ties will be keen to justify their existence and aportion blame on anyone and everyone but in the meantime, Royal Mail continues to shrink, postal services are only focused on large business customers, and instead of a postal service proving it's worth in the internet age, it has opted for late deliveries and cut out anything that costs money - regardless of whether it is seen as essential by small business or consumers.

A solution? I honestly haven't a clue and I don't think anyone else does either but we certainly need to evaluate the importance of the postal service, particularly for small business which we all hope will be the big business of tomorrow and provide much needed jobs. Our reliance on email is here to stay but we still need a way to transport small packets and parcels quickly and easily and at an affordable rate.

4pm in he afternoon for mail delivery (as mine was yesterday), is pushing the boundaries of 'next day delivery' to ridiculous proportions...

© Hellmail.co.uk (11 September 2008)

[Big Daz]

Bring back the monopoly

The most obvious solution as scrapping it was the cause of the bloddy problem in the first place

How about CWU get our sponsered MP's to lay down a Early Day Motion pulling out of the European directive?

Lets force the issue out into the open, no hand wringing about it not being possible, I dont care if its possible or not. If we got a substantial number of MP's signed up and generate enough noise we can drum home to the powers that be and the public the stark simple cause of all the problems facing royal mail and the post office network. In turn this will put pressure on the muppets in top level government that approved signing up to the EU master plan to explain them selves. And i dont want to hear any crap from them about improved quality of service and lower prices . Quality of service should be high regardless.

With a monoploy we could provide a high quality low cost service to ALL customers big and small!

[Night Tonic]

Idealistic but we'd be fined unimaginable costs by the EU if we tried that, as well as extortionate compensation for so called rivals. Forget the idea. Won't happen.

[Phantom]

At the end of the day this is all about a few people at the top who are going to get very rich and thats all that matters ££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££