Quote -"lethal combination” of a sharp fall in revenue from the declining number of letters and
parcels being sent"
Well thats wrong for a start parcels are through the roof thanks to the likes of Ebay.
Sorry this is a bit of a rant but it makes me quite cross.
I find it quite funny that they have decided to leave the Post Office counters alone no doubt due to the public outcries every time they force one to close. For us however we will be shown no support from the public as they have been brainwashed by rightwing press and newspapers into perceiving us as money grabbing lefties who need a good lesson in the economy to bring us back into line.
Its quite sad but a lot of the public still believe that we are losing money hand over foot and that we are totally over staffed for what is nothing more than a couple of hours walking around the streets with a bundle of mail under our arms. It comes as quite a surprise when you point out that we have in fact just achieved a 400m profit and slashed 60k jobs to be come more efficient.
We do not need to be privatised as we are a money making business. What is needed is some upper trimming and a closer look at the current DSA agreement to give us a fairer more even playing field. So i say lets bring on “the men in orange” out on the streets delivering and see how long the last against us delivering their own mail in a next day service.
However we have lost this battle before we even start because for the last couple years RM have been carefully playing the long quite game as they slowly but surely move us towards privatisation. What has saved us in the past time and time again has been public support with a sense of sentimentality to keep the Royal Mail publicly owned.
But just look what has happened in recent years as workers and unions have been pushed and forced into taking strike action when RM continued to break agreement after agreement. Once the action was taken the big guns of the media were turned against us and shot down nearly all our public support. The final kick in the gut was the sudden rush in documentaries and even a soap opera story (for Christ sake) on thieving postmen which were all carefully planned to sow the seed in the publics mind to allow full scale privatisation.
So its now going to happen and when the universal service obligation has been removed as an uneconomical threat to the shareholders profits and Joe public is being charged per area zone up and down the country and they find out the true cost of sending a letter from London to Edinburgh then we will see some real moans and groans but of course by then its all too late.
Finally our 10 billion pension black hole, yes ok it a huge amount but how much money did the government pour into failing banks only to see them pay themselves huge bonuses. If they bailed them out then why not us ?
Rant over
