According to the Guardian, the company that owns the Royal Mail, and which as a result controls ours postal service, has accepted a cash takeover offer for the whole company from Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský.
I have nothing against Czechs.
I can live with billionaires who pay all their taxes in the right place at the right time, and do not seek to use their financial might to unduly influence politics in ways unavailable to others.
But I do have major problems with the Royal Mail being under the control of a person or company from outside the UK.
I do, in fact, have problems with it being controlled by any individual.
Mail is not, of course, anything like as important as it once was. Volumes of letters posted have fallen considerably. But to pretend that this service is no longer a core part of our national infrastructure would be absurd.
And we know what happens to core infrastructure under foreign control. Just look at Thames Water.
So what should happen to the Royal Mail? In the first instance there should be a bar on its sale outside UK control. And then, like so many core services, nationalisation should be considered.
Privatisation and all the exploitation that has gone with it has failed. When will politicians admit the fact?
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“from Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský.”
Why does he want to buy it?
What possible benefit does he see from owning it?
What company structures will he put into place?
Will these structures aim at minimising the tax bill?
If there is an obvious benefit – why not retain ownership in the UK?
I notice that none of the parade of primping imbeciles that constitute the UK body politic are asking these questions.
The UK takes a further step down the road to decay.
Agreed
my question is ‘what is the value of the dividends which will be paid overseas?’
Who exactly owns Britain?
The majority of the railway companies, public utilities etc are all owned by “abroad “ and have been a disaster!
Vassal State by Angus Hanton provides most of the answers & in summary – the UK is a vassal state of the USA.
The Czech guy is just a US mini-me taking advantage of the current structures that political imbeciles (Tory, LINO, Lying Dems) have built – which has turned the UK into the basket-case and international laughing stock that it is.
& it will get worse when (if?) LINO get into power given they are wholly owned by a range of interest groups with deep pockets..
As someone noted on Twitter-sorry-X
The Czech is in the Post.
“Taking back control”….in the 1960’s I worked for the GPO (General Post Office) and was a Civil Servant, since privatised and now in foreign ownership. In the 1970’s I worked for British Road Services (BRS parcels), a State owned company…since privatised and eventually becoming part of the giant US company UPS. I also worked for BRS general haulage …which was privatised as Exel Logistics in the 1980’s and is now part of DHL or DeutchesPost. I then worked for a private company Carryfast/Haulfast which was taken over by US company UPS in the 1990’s. I am now retired but if you look at road haulage/logistics as one example it is largely owned by huge foreign corporations. I could probably say the same for many of our public utilities, I think the name “British” and use of “Royal” should be removed and actual ownership put in their place so that the public is aware of what has happened to “the family silver”.
Agreed
This was reported on Sky News (29/5), in which their business correspondent (forget his name) commented that any potential buyer of the Post Office, ‘… would have the burden of its public service requirement’. This says an awful lot about both the correspondent and probably Sky News that they see a public service requirement as a ‘burden’. However his comment probably reflects the views of other privatised public service providers such as the water companies, railways and power companies.
In a speech in 2015 Kretinsky said “We want to make money in industries that are dying because we think they’ll die much more slowly than the general consensus says.” Wikipedia I wonder what kind of asset stripping he’ll do, too.