Stamps could cost £1 if newly privatised RM loses VAT

[Darren Bent]

Then DSA prices should go up so much and it will put TNT out of business unless they deliver it. If DSA is 15p then it should be 70p each.

[borders]

This is a lot more complicated than the Mirror is making out. TNT won the right to a judicial review of previous judgements that have gone against them in 2012 long before privatisation was even announced.. The privatisation of RM doesn't change the issue of VAT exemption which as the OP says TNT have been challenging since at least 2009. If RM was forced to charge VAT on more of it's service it would increase costs. However, it would probably also mean that RM could claim back the VAT it pays for bought in goods and services e.g vans which would reduce costs. At the moment we can only claim a partial VAT refund. Also it's all very well for TNT to argue about unfairness but they are not currently required to offer the same level of service that RM is. Fairnesss works both ways.

Their is no fairness in a FREE MARKET it is dog eat dog is it not.

Is ours a free market though. I don't think TNT or RM would say that it is.

must admit reading your comments severely hacks me off. the deed has been done and no matter how you and your kind dress it up, the very fact it was sold - with such a blatant disregard for public opinion - tells us everything we need to know about the country we have become. Our government doesn’t act in our interests, in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. It’s these elites who wanted the Royal Mail sold, not the British people.
By privatising the Royal Mail, our coalition government has shown that it does not care a jot for our national heritage, or the devastating impact the sell-off will have on remote rural communities, or how the elderly and the poor will be disproportionately affected. They have shown us that all they care about is rewarding their wealthy backers in the City of London and keeping in with the giants of global capitalism.

The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service.

I'd be fascinated to know what, in those comments, hacks you off or what you think I am trying to "dress up".

The Mirror might have reflected the issue more accurately if wasn't in such a hurry to "prove" that privatisation was a bad thing by promoting a scare story about the price of stamps.

simply all your comments just about hack me off. your last sentence for instance, obviously in your eyes Privatisation is going to be a good thing , when to the contrary Privatisation is only in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. look at the manner in which RM was floated , a good deal for the vast majority of the public ?
I cant think of any successful privatisations , lets have a look at some.

The Railways being a great example :- Billions of pounds of public money is transferred to privately owned rail companies, whose shareholders and owners gorge themselves on the profits they make from charging us exorbitant rail fares. It's a massive transfer of money from ordinary working people to the fat cats. Subsidies to Britain's privatised rail companies have been up to five times higher than those received by British Rail.Fares will have increased by 40% since 2008. And this is at a time when average weekly wages have fallen by 5.5% since mid-2010.

Sealink is another example:- Sealink was privatised in 1984. In the year ending December 31 1983 this "inefficient" state-owned business had made a profit before interest and tax of £12.8 million.What on Earth was the state doing running a ferry company, the Thatcherites scoffed. It would be much better off in the private sector!

Another Rail Company :-
Directly Operated Railways, which has stepped into the breach twice to run East Coast Main Line after private train operating companies pulled the plug on their contracts, consistently outperforms the privateers.

DOR delivers a better return to the public purse than self-publicist Richard Branson's much-touted Virgin outfit on the West Coast Main Line.
It takes a particularly perverse government to do away with a public company that regularly hands over £150 million a year to the exchequer, peaking this year at £208 million.
those are just a couple of examples and I have not even mentioned Gas and Electricity.
how about the Private Finance Initiatives ? good deal for the public ? used to build and run schools, hospitals and prisons, which, it is now estimated, will cost up to £25bn more than if the government had paid for them directly or the water shortage achieved in rain-drenched southern England this summer by a privatised water company that had sold off 25 reservoirs over the past 20 years while rewarding shareholders with £5bn in dividends ?

And finally , an interesting piece to sign off with :-

"The experience of privatisation and outsourcing is that it routinely reduces service quality while failing to deliver promised savings. And where it does make early savings, it typically does so at the expense of low-paid workers' wages, jobs and conditions. Meanwhile, the public service ethos is eroded, and administration and transaction costs are driven up, as power slips from purchaser to provider and effective democratic control is lost.

Privatisation has been central to the neoliberal economic model that reigned supreme for a generation and crashed in 2008: creating profit growth out of existing provision – rather than delivering new goods and services, as entrepreneurial capitalism is supposed to do. It is a parasitic business whose main beneficiaries are taking the rest of us to the cleaners."

over to you Mr Fury ......

[cloherty1976]

I know things have got more expensive . Trains to me are a lot better like the trains at least one turns up and is more efficient and green than the rattlers in 70s and 80s. As for electricity and gas I have never had a no supply like in the 70s and for water as I live in the south we only had a hose pipe ban in a very hot summer but the taps always ran with water.

[Brain Fury]

This is a lot more complicated than the Mirror is making out. TNT won the right to a judicial review of previous judgements that have gone against them in 2012 long before privatisation was even announced.. The privatisation of RM doesn't change the issue of VAT exemption which as the OP says TNT have been challenging since at least 2009. If RM was forced to charge VAT on more of it's service it would increase costs. However, it would probably also mean that RM could claim back the VAT it pays for bought in goods and services e.g vans which would reduce costs. At the moment we can only claim a partial VAT refund. Also it's all very well for TNT to argue about unfairness but they are not currently required to offer the same level of service that RM is. Fairnesss works both ways.

Their is no fairness in a FREE MARKET it is dog eat dog is it not.

Is ours a free market though. I don't think TNT or RM would say that it is.

must admit reading your comments severely hacks me off. the deed has been done and no matter how you and your kind dress it up, the very fact it was sold - with such a blatant disregard for public opinion - tells us everything we need to know about the country we have become. Our government doesn’t act in our interests, in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. It’s these elites who wanted the Royal Mail sold, not the British people.
By privatising the Royal Mail, our coalition government has shown that it does not care a jot for our national heritage, or the devastating impact the sell-off will have on remote rural communities, or how the elderly and the poor will be disproportionately affected. They have shown us that all they care about is rewarding their wealthy backers in the City of London and keeping in with the giants of global capitalism.

The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service.

I'd be fascinated to know what, in those comments, hacks you off or what you think I am trying to "dress up".

The Mirror might have reflected the issue more accurately if wasn't in such a hurry to "prove" that privatisation was a bad thing by promoting a scare story about the price of stamps.

simply all your comments just about hack me off. your last sentence for instance, obviously in your eyes Privatisation is going to be a good thing , when to the contrary Privatisation is only in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. look at the manner in which RM was floated , a good deal for the vast majority of the public ?
I cant think of any successful privatisations , lets have a look at some.

The Railways being a great example :- Billions of pounds of public money is transferred to privately owned rail companies, whose shareholders and owners gorge themselves on the profits they make from charging us exorbitant rail fares. It's a massive transfer of money from ordinary working people to the fat cats. Subsidies to Britain's privatised rail companies have been up to five times higher than those received by British Rail.Fares will have increased by 40% since 2008. And this is at a time when average weekly wages have fallen by 5.5% since mid-2010.

Sealink is another example:- Sealink was privatised in 1984. In the year ending December 31 1983 this "inefficient" state-owned business had made a profit before interest and tax of £12.8 million.What on Earth was the state doing running a ferry company, the Thatcherites scoffed. It would be much better off in the private sector!

Another Rail Company :-
Directly Operated Railways, which has stepped into the breach twice to run East Coast Main Line after private train operating companies pulled the plug on their contracts, consistently outperforms the privateers.

DOR delivers a better return to the public purse than self-publicist Richard Branson's much-touted Virgin outfit on the West Coast Main Line.
It takes a particularly perverse government to do away with a public company that regularly hands over £150 million a year to the exchequer, peaking this year at £208 million.
those are just a couple of examples and I have not even mentioned Gas and Electricity.
how about the Private Finance Initiatives ? good deal for the public ? used to build and run schools, hospitals and prisons, which, it is now estimated, will cost up to £25bn more than if the government had paid for them directly or the water shortage achieved in rain-drenched southern England this summer by a privatised water company that had sold off 25 reservoirs over the past 20 years while rewarding shareholders with £5bn in dividends ?

And finally , an interesting piece to sign off with :-

"The experience of privatisation and outsourcing is that it routinely reduces service quality while failing to deliver promised savings. And where it does make early savings, it typically does so at the expense of low-paid workers' wages, jobs and conditions. Meanwhile, the public service ethos is eroded, and administration and transaction costs are driven up, as power slips from purchaser to provider and effective democratic control is lost.

Privatisation has been central to the neoliberal economic model that reigned supreme for a generation and crashed in 2008: creating profit growth out of existing provision – rather than delivering new goods and services, as entrepreneurial capitalism is supposed to do. It is a parasitic business whose main beneficiaries are taking the rest of us to the cleaners."

over to you Mr Fury ......

What a very peculiar post. Nowhere in this thread have I said that privatisation of RM or any other organisation is good or bad. That's mainly because the VAT issue is nothing to do with privatisation. I know why the Mirror tried to conflate the two issues but I don't know why you seem determined to ignore the points that I actually made and to simply use what you think or choose to believe I said to attack me (and of course my kind). You didn't answer the question about what in my specific comments hacked you off or I was trying to dress up. Want to have another go? Try to focus on the actual words ...

"The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service."

[fishtank]

Just a personal thought but.....
I think TNT realise that at some point if they continue with the end to end model they will have to contribute through subsidy to the USO.
I think they realise that this will probably be the point at which Royal Mail loses its VAT Exemption and at the moment they are simply laying the groundwork for that future argument.
If Royal Mail's strongest argument for maintaining VAT Exemption is the added liability of the USO then a competitor's subsidy/levy will address that issue to a certain extent and remove the barrier.
There will of course be many arguments to come over the level of that subsidy and how it's applied.

[borders]

This is a lot more complicated than the Mirror is making out. TNT won the right to a judicial review of previous judgements that have gone against them in 2012 long before privatisation was even announced.. The privatisation of RM doesn't change the issue of VAT exemption which as the OP says TNT have been challenging since at least 2009. If RM was forced to charge VAT on more of it's service it would increase costs. However, it would probably also mean that RM could claim back the VAT it pays for bought in goods and services e.g vans which would reduce costs. At the moment we can only claim a partial VAT refund. Also it's all very well for TNT to argue about unfairness but they are not currently required to offer the same level of service that RM is. Fairnesss works both ways.

Their is no fairness in a FREE MARKET it is dog eat dog is it not.

Is ours a free market though. I don't think TNT or RM would say that it is.

must admit reading your comments severely hacks me off. the deed has been done and no matter how you and your kind dress it up, the very fact it was sold - with such a blatant disregard for public opinion - tells us everything we need to know about the country we have become. Our government doesn’t act in our interests, in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. It’s these elites who wanted the Royal Mail sold, not the British people.
By privatising the Royal Mail, our coalition government has shown that it does not care a jot for our national heritage, or the devastating impact the sell-off will have on remote rural communities, or how the elderly and the poor will be disproportionately affected. They have shown us that all they care about is rewarding their wealthy backers in the City of London and keeping in with the giants of global capitalism.

The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service.

I'd be fascinated to know what, in those comments, hacks you off or what you think I am trying to "dress up".

The Mirror might have reflected the issue more accurately if wasn't in such a hurry to "prove" that privatisation was a bad thing by promoting a scare story about the price of stamps.

simply all your comments just about hack me off. your last sentence for instance, obviously in your eyes Privatisation is going to be a good thing , when to the contrary Privatisation is only in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. look at the manner in which RM was floated , a good deal for the vast majority of the public ?
I cant think of any successful privatisations , lets have a look at some.

The Railways being a great example :- Billions of pounds of public money is transferred to privately owned rail companies, whose shareholders and owners gorge themselves on the profits they make from charging us exorbitant rail fares. It's a massive transfer of money from ordinary working people to the fat cats. Subsidies to Britain's privatised rail companies have been up to five times higher than those received by British Rail.Fares will have increased by 40% since 2008. And this is at a time when average weekly wages have fallen by 5.5% since mid-2010.

Sealink is another example:- Sealink was privatised in 1984. In the year ending December 31 1983 this "inefficient" state-owned business had made a profit before interest and tax of £12.8 million.What on Earth was the state doing running a ferry company, the Thatcherites scoffed. It would be much better off in the private sector!

Another Rail Company :-
Directly Operated Railways, which has stepped into the breach twice to run East Coast Main Line after private train operating companies pulled the plug on their contracts, consistently outperforms the privateers.

DOR delivers a better return to the public purse than self-publicist Richard Branson's much-touted Virgin outfit on the West Coast Main Line.
It takes a particularly perverse government to do away with a public company that regularly hands over £150 million a year to the exchequer, peaking this year at £208 million.
those are just a couple of examples and I have not even mentioned Gas and Electricity.
how about the Private Finance Initiatives ? good deal for the public ? used to build and run schools, hospitals and prisons, which, it is now estimated, will cost up to £25bn more than if the government had paid for them directly or the water shortage achieved in rain-drenched southern England this summer by a privatised water company that had sold off 25 reservoirs over the past 20 years while rewarding shareholders with £5bn in dividends ?

And finally , an interesting piece to sign off with :-

"The experience of privatisation and outsourcing is that it routinely reduces service quality while failing to deliver promised savings. And where it does make early savings, it typically does so at the expense of low-paid workers' wages, jobs and conditions. Meanwhile, the public service ethos is eroded, and administration and transaction costs are driven up, as power slips from purchaser to provider and effective democratic control is lost.

Privatisation has been central to the neoliberal economic model that reigned supreme for a generation and crashed in 2008: creating profit growth out of existing provision – rather than delivering new goods and services, as entrepreneurial capitalism is supposed to do. It is a parasitic business whose main beneficiaries are taking the rest of us to the cleaners."

over to you Mr Fury ......

What a very peculiar post. Nowhere in this thread have I said that privatisation of RM or any other organisation is good or bad. That's mainly because the VAT issue is nothing to do with privatisation. I know why the Mirror tried to conflate the two issues but I don't know why you seem determined to ignore the points that I actually made and to simply use what you think or choose to believe I said to attack meYou didn't answer the question about what in my specific comments hacked you off or I was trying to dress up. Want to have another go? Try to focus on the actual words ...

"The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service."

it was a general comment on the make up of so many of your comments on the website , not just the VAT argument. however, the VAT has become an issue because the market has been opened up for Competition and ever since this has happened the writing has been on the wall for the RM to be privatised. once these few little problems have been sorted out amongst themselves, the 5 or 6 biggest companies will then monopolise the market just like the gas , electricity, water and railways etc have done and we all know what happens to the profits and services then, as many of my examples have shown.
" (and of course my kind) " , your words not mine have done very well out of it , but you now seem to be sitting on the fence..... is Privatisation good or bad ? is it good for me or is it good for your kind ??

[Brain Fury]

This is a lot more complicated than the Mirror is making out. TNT won the right to a judicial review of previous judgements that have gone against them in 2012 long before privatisation was even announced.. The privatisation of RM doesn't change the issue of VAT exemption which as the OP says TNT have been challenging since at least 2009. If RM was forced to charge VAT on more of it's service it would increase costs. However, it would probably also mean that RM could claim back the VAT it pays for bought in goods and services e.g vans which would reduce costs. At the moment we can only claim a partial VAT refund. Also it's all very well for TNT to argue about unfairness but they are not currently required to offer the same level of service that RM is. Fairnesss works both ways.

Their is no fairness in a FREE MARKET it is dog eat dog is it not.

Is ours a free market though. I don't think TNT or RM would say that it is.

must admit reading your comments severely hacks me off. the deed has been done and no matter how you and your kind dress it up, the very fact it was sold - with such a blatant disregard for public opinion - tells us everything we need to know about the country we have become. Our government doesn’t act in our interests, in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. It’s these elites who wanted the Royal Mail sold, not the British people.
By privatising the Royal Mail, our coalition government has shown that it does not care a jot for our national heritage, or the devastating impact the sell-off will have on remote rural communities, or how the elderly and the poor will be disproportionately affected. They have shown us that all they care about is rewarding their wealthy backers in the City of London and keeping in with the giants of global capitalism.

The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service.

I'd be fascinated to know what, in those comments, hacks you off or what you think I am trying to "dress up".

The Mirror might have reflected the issue more accurately if wasn't in such a hurry to "prove" that privatisation was a bad thing by promoting a scare story about the price of stamps.

simply all your comments just about hack me off. your last sentence for instance, obviously in your eyes Privatisation is going to be a good thing , when to the contrary Privatisation is only in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. look at the manner in which RM was floated , a good deal for the vast majority of the public ?
I cant think of any successful privatisations , lets have a look at some.

The Railways being a great example :- Billions of pounds of public money is transferred to privately owned rail companies, whose shareholders and owners gorge themselves on the profits they make from charging us exorbitant rail fares. It's a massive transfer of money from ordinary working people to the fat cats. Subsidies to Britain's privatised rail companies have been up to five times higher than those received by British Rail.Fares will have increased by 40% since 2008. And this is at a time when average weekly wages have fallen by 5.5% since mid-2010.

Sealink is another example:- Sealink was privatised in 1984. In the year ending December 31 1983 this "inefficient" state-owned business had made a profit before interest and tax of £12.8 million.What on Earth was the state doing running a ferry company, the Thatcherites scoffed. It would be much better off in the private sector!

Another Rail Company :-
Directly Operated Railways, which has stepped into the breach twice to run East Coast Main Line after private train operating companies pulled the plug on their contracts, consistently outperforms the privateers.

DOR delivers a better return to the public purse than self-publicist Richard Branson's much-touted Virgin outfit on the West Coast Main Line.
It takes a particularly perverse government to do away with a public company that regularly hands over £150 million a year to the exchequer, peaking this year at £208 million.
those are just a couple of examples and I have not even mentioned Gas and Electricity.
how about the Private Finance Initiatives ? good deal for the public ? used to build and run schools, hospitals and prisons, which, it is now estimated, will cost up to £25bn more than if the government had paid for them directly or the water shortage achieved in rain-drenched southern England this summer by a privatised water company that had sold off 25 reservoirs over the past 20 years while rewarding shareholders with £5bn in dividends ?

And finally , an interesting piece to sign off with :-

"The experience of privatisation and outsourcing is that it routinely reduces service quality while failing to deliver promised savings. And where it does make early savings, it typically does so at the expense of low-paid workers' wages, jobs and conditions. Meanwhile, the public service ethos is eroded, and administration and transaction costs are driven up, as power slips from purchaser to provider and effective democratic control is lost.

Privatisation has been central to the neoliberal economic model that reigned supreme for a generation and crashed in 2008: creating profit growth out of existing provision – rather than delivering new goods and services, as entrepreneurial capitalism is supposed to do. It is a parasitic business whose main beneficiaries are taking the rest of us to the cleaners."

over to you Mr Fury ......

What a very peculiar post. Nowhere in this thread have I said that privatisation of RM or any other organisation is good or bad. That's mainly because the VAT issue is nothing to do with privatisation. I know why the Mirror tried to conflate the two issues but I don't know why you seem determined to ignore the points that I actually made and to simply use what you think or choose to believe I said to attack meYou didn't answer the question about what in my specific comments hacked you off or I was trying to dress up. Want to have another go? Try to focus on the actual words ...

"The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service."

it was a general comment on the make up of so many of your comments on the website , not just the VAT argument. however, the VAT has become an issue because the market has been opened up for Competition and ever since this has happened the writing has been on the wall for the RM to be privatised. once these few little problems have been sorted out amongst themselves, the 5 or 6 biggest companies will then monopolise the market just like the gas , electricity, water and railways etc have done and we all know what happens to the profits and services then, as many of my examples have shown.
" (and of course my kind) " , your words not mine have done very well out of it , but you now seem to be sitting on the fence..... is Privatisation good or bad ? is it good for me or is it good for your kind ??

Still not sure why you bothered to respond to my comments about the VAT issue when nothing you've written has anything to do with the subject of the thread or my comments. I can only assume that you simply wanted to have general go at me and my kind (which were your words actually i.e. "the deed has been done and no matter how you and your kind dress it up ..."). Presumably it's because I dared to suggest that the facts of the VAT issue didn't support the anti-privatisation polemic in the Mirror article quoted in the OP. I get that you're upset that RM has been privatised but not every issue facing RM is linked to it.

I'm not sitting on the fence. I've always said that given where RM finds itself since the market was opened up to competition in 2006, privatisation is the least bad option for RM as a businesses. As for me and my kind having done very well out of privatisation, I don't think I will have done any better than you have.

[osgoody1970]

Moya's been on the news, saying that the cost of stamps may have to rise for us to stay competitive!!!! didn't take long did it!!!!

[UnhappyGremlin]

Moya's been on the news, saying that the cost of stamps may have to rise for us to stay competitive!!!! didn't take long did it!!!!

Personally, I think she showed marvellous restraint......

[borders]

This is a lot more complicated than the Mirror is making out. TNT won the right to a judicial review of previous judgements that have gone against them in 2012 long before privatisation was even announced.. The privatisation of RM doesn't change the issue of VAT exemption which as the OP says TNT have been challenging since at least 2009. If RM was forced to charge VAT on more of it's service it would increase costs. However, it would probably also mean that RM could claim back the VAT it pays for bought in goods and services e.g vans which would reduce costs. At the moment we can only claim a partial VAT refund. Also it's all very well for TNT to argue about unfairness but they are not currently required to offer the same level of service that RM is. Fairnesss works both ways.

Their is no fairness in a FREE MARKET it is dog eat dog is it not.

Is ours a free market though. I don't think TNT or RM would say that it is.

must admit reading your comments severely hacks me off. the deed has been done and no matter how you and your kind dress it up, the very fact it was sold - with such a blatant disregard for public opinion - tells us everything we need to know about the country we have become. Our government doesn’t act in our interests, in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. It’s these elites who wanted the Royal Mail sold, not the British people.
By privatising the Royal Mail, our coalition government has shown that it does not care a jot for our national heritage, or the devastating impact the sell-off will have on remote rural communities, or how the elderly and the poor will be disproportionately affected. They have shown us that all they care about is rewarding their wealthy backers in the City of London and keeping in with the giants of global capitalism.

The VAT argument a is complex one and TNT began arguing that RM should have to charge VAT long before we were privatised. Businesses that charge VAT can recover the VAT that they pay on bought in goods and services so if at some point in the future we were forced to charge VAT we could also recover the VAT we pay which we cannot do now. It could offset the effect on our prices of including VAT. I also suggested that TNT would argue that it isn't currently a free market because RM doesn't have to charge VAT on all services. Similarly RM would argue that it isn't a free market because TNT doesn't have to meet the USO standards for their direct delivery service.

I'd be fascinated to know what, in those comments, hacks you off or what you think I am trying to "dress up".

The Mirror might have reflected the issue more accurately if wasn't in such a hurry to "prove" that privatisation was a bad thing by promoting a scare story about the price of stamps.

looks like the Mirror may have got it right then !!!

[Brain Fury]

looks like the Mirror may have got it right then !!!

I only saw Moya's interview on Sky. Was she on another channel saying that stamps were going up to £1 then? That's what the Mirror said. Come to that did she even say that prices were going up or when because I didn't hear her say that on Sky. According to the Sky News website she said ...

"We are very proud of the value that we provide for 60p, but we also know that in that field, where we have structural decline on the letters side, we have to be very careful about pricing," she said. "We are very pleased that if you compare our prices to other countries in the European Union, if you look in various weight categories between zero and 100g, we are at the low to middle of the spectrum. I don't think you're going to see a company that is going to be senseless about the pricing lever [but] we [both] need to stay competitive and retain the loyalty of our customer base."

Asked if that meant a price rise was imminent, Ms Greene said:

"Well, we didn't raise stamp prices last year... The average UK household spends 50p each week on stamps. We have to price only for the value that we deliver."

Now I know that Sky interpreted that as "paving the way" for stamp price increases and I know that it suits you and your kind to interpret it negatively and as a consequence of privatisation but perhaps you could point out exactly where in the statement above she said that prices are increasing now or when they will? Were you expecting her to rule out any price increase ever?