The Royal Mail is not royal, if ever it was.
It has not been an essential state-supplied service for some time, although I doubt we can survive without it as a universal service.
And now it is going to be owned by a Czech-controlled entrepreneur. There is not even going to be the semblance of a fully accountable quoted company subject to the due processes of the corporate governance regime that goes with such operations behind it because I do not think they can exist in entities dominated by a single person.
And, apparently, this is OK with the Labour government because, according to a rash of media reports this morning, clearance has been given to takeover of the Royal Mail parent company by Daniel Kretinsky's EP Group.
According to the BBC, there are some caveats:
The government will retain a so called "golden share" that will require it to approve any major changes to Royal Mail's ownership, HQ location and tax residency.
The result is that another essential service within the UK ceases to have UK control, and the infrastructure of this country is gutted to create a profit opportunity elsewhere as a result.
I have heard all the reassurances that will be given, and I do not trust them. And, for the record, tax residency does not mean paying UK tax.
Why is it that we do not believe in ourselves in this country?
And why don't we value what keeps the country operating?
Is it really true that only profit matters?
And for how long can that pretence be maintained when it is so obviously false?
As I have already noted this morning, there are big questions needing answers right now. These are among them.
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I live in a town, on a new development – now 3 years old. We have already had the new proposed level of delivery, ie every other day – and that’s on a good week. In the build up to Christmas though there has been no delivery for 10 days. I went to the delivery office and collected mine and was told the reason for the lack of delivery is that no-one had organised the extra agency Christmas staff. I’m old enough to remember that doing the Christmas post was a standard job for university students, employed by the local office. Now apparently it is only via an agency who takes their £ cut no doubt. All the focus is on parcel delivery, post is an optional extra it would appear.
Together with a significant rise in the price of a stamp, there is becoming a significant disincentive to sending any Christmas cards, and indeed any post – presumably the objective. A bit like a cashless society, let’s move all communication onto computers and sod anyone who does not have one – easier to monitor what you are doing and who you are in communication with. Step by step we move towards the capacity for totalitarianism.
Wow, that is shocking.
And yes, being a Christmas posty was a standard student cash generator, as I recall.
“A bit like a cashless society, let’s move all communication onto computers and sod anyone who does not have one – easier to monitor what you are doing and who you are in communication with. ”
Exactly right. Nobody notices, nobody cares. It is all so convenient to enough people to discount everyone else, especially those who notice that what we are doing is turning human beings into digital fodder . Government doesn’t care and pretends the serious flaws do not matter; because it suits government too, to turn people into digital fodder. Only business matters. You are here to work. If you don’t work you do not count. The work being done may be little better than a cheap scam (tell me, please when the black economy is actually bigger than the selective one economists think they are looking at – nobody will notice, and nobody cares), and is no doubt paying peanuts.
A “golden share”? Something that sounds like a good thing … except that there is nothing to stop the gevernment from approving any change put forward.
Richard, you state that “tax residency does not mean paying UK tax”. Don’t doubt your tax knowledge but a quick Google found this…
“Tax Implications for UK Tax Resident Companies
UK tax resident companies are subject to UK corporation tax on their worldwide income and gains. This means that all profits, regardless of where they are generated, are taxable under UK law. In contrast, non-UK tax resident companies are generally only subject to UK corporation tax on profits attributable to a UK permanent establishment. Additionally, they are liable for UK income tax on certain UK-source income.”
Can you elaborate on your comment?
There has to be a UK profit to pay UK tax.
Royal Mail will be part of a multinational corporation. It remains too easy to prifiut shoft within them, even if country-by-country reporting is in use. That is what I am saying.
The UK arm of the business will be paying very high license fees, royalty fees, consultancy fees, copyright fees, or even loan interest or lease fees etc to an overseas entity with no tax liability. Study the Google playbook.
Precisely….
It has been a long time since there has been a universal service in mail provision in Britain. This is just the last hurrah. People who live in the Highlands of Scotland pay a problematic premium price for the delivery of parcels already. Scotland has a very different geography and population distribution to almost all of the rest of the UK. The whole point of the Union is that everyone has equal access to services. In matters of the mail, even the hard-nosed, laissez-faire Victorians understood that principle was not debatable.
All that means nothing to neoliberalism, to Labour or conservative governments: nor does the Union, save as a fake news scam.
Re: Scotland deliveries
Not all companies deliver to the Highlands and Islands, or deliver at extra cost.
Some of the Paisley postcodes (PA) are allocated to the islands. So you can live in Paisley, eight miles from Glasgow, and either have no delivery at all or have to pay a premium.
Staggering
“All that means nothing to neoliberalism, to Labour or conservative governments: nor does the Union, save as a fake news scam”
Two things:
1 – The Union (CWU) and its UK Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) knew last July that the new Government would facilitate/set-up an EP Group buyout of Royal Mail and its parent group IDS.
2 – In Britain the organised (unionised) working class is on a collision course with the Labour government, the most-right wing and pro-business in history and its agenda of continued austerity and perpetual war.
Picking upyour point about fake news and scam, John, perhaps it is the Universal Service itself, which, since before Vince Cable’s privatisation of Royal Mail, has been the real target of ‘reform’. Too expensive, anti-competitive.
Universal benefits and services were too hot an issue for government’s to challenge, for generations; but the ‘mood music’ has changed, and the neoliberal press has written more about “means-testing” in the last two years than I have ever heard before. Labour is latching on to this, as if it is by popular demand, rather than the neoliberal propaganda by selective political lobbyists and press it really is.
Every protection for the consumer, the disabled, the old, the vulnerable and the young is disintegrating in front of our eyes. You can’t trust anything anymore.
Einstein’s definition of madness – doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.
How is this different than water or rail?
Now, in a world of electronic communications and Amazon there are legitimate questions about what “universal service means”. Delivery times, delivery frequencies, degree of cross subsidies, level of competition, price are all areas of discussion…. but let’s discuss them rather than sell it off to avoid the debate and hope it goes away. I am afraid this spinelessness does not auger well for dealing with Thames Water.
Agreed
On my earlier comment, the unfinished sentence should have finished thus: “… or simply allows the State to discard the undeserving poor altogether”. Blunkett’s recent sweeping remark: “the government ‘doesn’t owe you’ if people ‘can’t be bothered’ to work.” (Sky News) answers nothing, and is rich only in blame – an unedifying insight into the judgement of a past Government Minister. The problem is that the undeserving do not go away, nor do their problems; and the more they are discarded the worse it becomes, and the more it costs the State – simply to fail, at huge expense to fix the problem or improve prospects..
*if there are masses of ‘not bothered’ who do not work; what does that tell us about the country we have built, or the last forty years of government? To me it is an illustration, along with the steep fall in people voting, the poor standing of politics, the endless corruption or decay of our institutions, whose failures are being exposed slowly to the light each and every day (Churches, Covid and Post Office Inquiry, Blood Scandal, Grenfell, the Civil Service, Royalty, and on and on); politicians should be scrutinising themselves for their failures, not pontificating to the Press for easy headlines. They have failed those who have turned away.
Blunkett is, in my opinion, an architect of where Labour is – Labour In Name Only.
What “universal service” means is not changed by digital technology. It means that everyone in the polity is entitled to equal and equitable basic treatment in the provision of services; whether for health or mail. I understand and accept that technology changes delivery fundamentally; but the problem is that neoliberal ideology turns that inevitable power of technology into a right for the owners of the technology to determine the form and price of delivery in all circumstances.
Universalism is now constantly under attack, even by the Labour Party. Universalism is the only reliable protection for the vulnerable that we have. The proposition that it is too generous to the well-off begs the question. A progressive tax system is designed in principle to possess the facility to tax back any benefits they receive from a supposed over-generous Universal benefit; simple, effective and cheap to administer; because there are no precise systems. One of the problems is that a precise cut-off always excludes people who should be included (or vice versa). The attack on Universalism is a desire to return to comprehensive means-testing. Means testing is a ludicrously over expensive, grossly resource squandering way to supply a universal service which can be taxed back much cheaper by the state. Means testing is a deeply ignorant and proven incompetent system of delivering benefits that are notable solely for excessive cost, gross inefficiency, and perpetual ineffectiveness and failure to work.
What lies behind the attack on Universalism is a desire to return to a pre-Victorian morality of the “undeserving poor”, who will only respond to fear, restraint, exhortation; and are best served by charity over State provision, or simply . It is grotesque that it survives in the 21st century.
Much to agree with.
Everything to agree with.
There is a stealth campaign in place in our village re collections from the post boxes.
They are no longer collecting every day – but I can’t find which days they are collecting.
The “ticket” they slip in place to show when the next collection is going to be (which used to show the following day) is either not put in place at all, or is ignored (ie the ticket showing a next collection of Tuesday is still there on Thursday).
The result is that, for anything important, I now drive a three mile round trip to the post office.
The volume of post going through the box reduces – and Royal Mail can claim it is no longer used/needed and take it away.
Sneaky but effective.
Post boxes all contain a barcode that must be scanned, and the GPS co-ordinates at the time of the scan are logged, so I’m a bit dubious about this. It’s possible that one of the date tags has gone missing, or that someone is just remiss in swapping them over – of course, the uncertainty this engenders is almost as bad as not collecting the mail at all.
They’re very expensive now – for sure. What gets me though is the post boxes a round me used to have several collections a day and one of them had a last post of about 7pm. Now they’re down to one collection a day – at 9am. Which doesn’t really sound like a “last” collection. I also have to attend The Christie in south west Manchester and I’ve missed appointments because the letter has arrived after the appointment. They’ve also posted out tablets on Special Delivery so supposed to be next day by 1pm and it clearly said that on the printed label on the envelope. I didn’t get it until the following Wednesday – nearly a week later. So…
Suffering results, is the obvious conclusion.
What the ‘9 a.m. collection’ means is that the mail can be collected at any time from 9 a.m. onwards – the PDAs all posties and other couriers carry now enforce this. This will be done as part of the area postie’s usual rounds. Boxes next to sub post offices or in other busy locations still have multiple daily collections.
I watched Sky News this morning, and from what I understand (quite probably completely wrong!) the so-called “golden share” is only going to be for 5 years. I don’t think that sounds particularly “golden”! What happens when the 5 years are up? Even now 1st class stamps are £1.65 each, which is ridiculous. Many people won’t be able to afford to send Christmas cards. It’s send Christmas cards or eat, on top of the heat or eat cruelty.
Why is the Union in favour? What can the Czech company do that can’t be done in UK?
Presumably he will try to compete with DPD and all the other pracel companeis – and maybe do Amazon deliveries also – while allowing the letter post to wither. Obviously we are no longer posting so many letters – but why, as you say Richard cant we do this restructuring in-house? Why was it privatised in the first place?
The Tories were just a bunch of spivs – everything had a price, nothing had a value, and bit by bit they started selling the country off to whoever would buy it, not just obscenely rich foreigners, but foreign governments too (as with a lot of rail franchises – no ideological objections to state ownership of British railways; as long as it wasn’t the UK state, that is.
Hideously depressing to find that Starmer is happy to flog off the UK too.
I use a film disc rental service which is preferable to Netflix and the like for a multitude of reasons, most prominently the ability to watch many more films in particular foreign and art house. But their service relies on royal mail delivering letters promptly. If they ever go out of business it will be squarely on Royal Mail. UK Government, letting a UK run business who pays taxes squander at the hands of a foreign billionaire. And I’m sure it’s not the only company that would be affected.
Thank you to Richard and all readers.
My employer, an EU bank, has the French, Italian and German post offices, including their UK arms, as clients. It’s disgraceful that the UK PO can’t be run like them.
The unions and others should outflank Starmer by saying the PO should be GB PO or Royal Mail, outflank with a bit of flag waving and public ownership.
Labour will all in favour of UK ownership when in Opposition. But now they have to support the City they don’t care.
I’m not very happy about this at all but it seems in line with further state retrenchment in line with typical Neo-liberal requirements. For all we know, the deals done to let the American parcels sector into the country made a commitment to end a state ran or supported postal service or face some sort of legal action under the guise of ‘anti-competition’?
I see my towns postal service quite a lot and others too. All those jobs…………..
And all those assets – sorting offices, maintenance depots all ripe for selling off. When a state sanctions burglary you know the end is nigh.
It is a hard enough task even finding a post office, let alone a sub post office, these days. I recently needed to post a letter and went into the town centre to buy a stamp. As I queued, the computer system suddenly went down, and they could not sell anything. So I left and found a Waterstones and asked if they sold stamps. Only books of min 4 they said. £6.60! I posted the letter, by now not guaranteed collection before 9 am the next day, and the remaining 3 stamps are in a drawer somewhere at home.
I doubt the new owner will improve the service, somehow.
Hmm yes, Royal. I hesitate to even write it with a capital R. Having said that it’s the one service with Royal in the title that I have not been able to avoid using
Nils Pratley also has a timely and informative article “Labour’s gamble with Royal Mail may go horribly wrong” in the Business section of today’s Guardian
I will take a look.
For once I might agree with him.
Where does the Money for profit, interest and new products and service come from? What is the maths behind it?
Commercial bank made money. Read Stephanie Kelton.