say goodbye to affordable postage
 

thats it while weve been hood winked by britains got talent and rubbish tv the goverment are pushing through the privatision of the post office and it will cost 10.1 billion of tax payers money for the privilege to make the privileged more money its a disgrace and people were calling the posties when they went on strike way back i siad it would be a stich up and i know this was started by blair and mandelson as i stated here http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/f...are-50031.html




http://www.publicservice.co.uk/dyn_g...ing-letter.jpg
The Royal Mail is to be privatised as early as next year after Parliament approved the plan which could cost £10.1bn of public money – £1.7bn to 'bail out' the service and £8.4bn to cover the pension deficit.

The plans protect the 'universal postal service' in its current form for at least the life of the current Parliament and the Post Office network will remain intact. Also, Royal Mail staff will be given a stake in the new private company. However, unions are working with The Royal Mail to manage the loss of 8,000 jobs a year until 2013.

Postal services have suffered in recent years with the advent of e-mail, the internet and mobile phone texting. This has seen The Royal Mail's profits plummet by 73 per cent in one year and mail volumes are expected to fall by another 40 per cent over the next five years.

The postal services minister Ed Davey said The Royal Mail needed to be on a "sustainable commercial footing" if the public was to continue to receive the level of service that it does at the moment.

"The company currently has around £1.7bn of debt facilities with the government," he said. "We intend to restructure the company's balance sheet in due course ... [and] we will need to reduce significantly that level of debt."

He added that the government would need "approval from the European Commission to provide this financial support".

The Business Secretary Vince Cable said: "Royal Mail and the Post Office are important and cherished parts of our society. Passing the legislation, reforming regulation, getting state aid approval, tackling the pension deficit – these are all vital steps that will provide momentum towards a sale of Royal Mail. They will also give the company the security and certainty it needs to press ahead with its essential modernisation programme."

But Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, took a swipe at Cable.

"The fact of the matter is the British public don't want to see the Royal Mail privatised," the union man told Sky News. "Vince Cable is flogging this company to the very people he denounced at the Liberal party conference – the spivs, the speculators and those who just want to make a fast buck."

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

I know that the Tories don't and never have given one about the people of this country. But can you imagine being a Lib-Dem and having to live with yourself, knowing that you have sold your soul for a taste of power and 'ahem' glory?

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Just an after thought. Has anyone any idea what percentage of the electorate who voted in the general election actually agreed with and voted for the privatisation of the Royal Mail?

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

i work for post office and its the first i have heard about it !! !!
and if the royal mail didn't let all the competiton use all there sorting machines to sort there mail out and then let us deliver it at a loss maybee the debt wouldnt be so much !!

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Has it really?

I now use postal services more than ever because of ebay and amazon etc.

My guess is that they have lost a lot of business to other postal services because they are to expensive.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

2006 the Royal Mail lost it's monopoly & other companies could vie for licences, now in 2011 the talk is of privatisation because as an entity the R.M. apppears to be losing out hand over fist. To start crying "crocodile tears" at this junction over the loss of such a traditional service & bleating about the nasty private investors is frankly quite nauseating.

As is the case with many publicly funded amenities, the mismanagement, wasteful attitudes & self serving ways of the hierarchy has brought this problem down upon their own heads. Had the management & unions invested half as much effort into streamlining, cutting waste & improving the service on offer as they have on seeing to their own personal gains & power bases it'd likely be a much different story.

Let's be realistic in all this, being all dewy eyed about the old romantic ideals of the Postie battling his way through storms & gales to get the mail through at all costs is a fantasy of a bygone age (when did you last use the postal service to send a letter ?). Especially now in this electronic age of texts, MSM, e-mails etc. people want their info now or even yesterday & aren't prepared to wait 3-4 Days for a letter anymore, plus pay over the odds for a vague promise of punctuality.

PS. this wasn't copied & pasted either, all my own work ;) take it as an example. :)

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

funnily enough dave i use the postal service more now than i ever have, have no real answer as to why, probably cos ive got more leisure time?

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Only cos you're down the Post office every week getting your pension. :D Now come along Granddad you're holding up the queue ! :) ;)

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

I use the postal service quite a bit too.
I have family in the antipodes, and yes we do keep in touch by e-mail, but an e-card is nothing like one of my hand made ones.......and I do still send small packages for birthdays and such.
Only this week I posted cards that would normally have cost me £1.68...the price had gone up to £2.06.....but what can you do? There is no alternative service for small items of mail...or at least not one that I am aware.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

i sent spugs birthday pressie up to him wi his birthday card last month, i send him care packages pretty regular ... coltsfoot rock, licorice tablets, etc ... cos he cant get them up there ..

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

nope dont use it fer that at all............yet.:D

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

No they seem to have the letter market sewn up , but for larger packages the post office is really expensive, the private courier services are a lot cheaper.Sent a package the other week weighing about 10kg from accy to brighton picked up from home too for £7.32, for two day delivery royal mail was about twice that price.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

its nearly 6 quid to send a registered letter, have sent 2 recently that required signatures. robbing pigs.:rolleyes:

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Sounds about right cashy , they have a monopoly for a long time but having said that as with a lot of state owned concerns investment and need to keep competitive have been overlooked with an attitude of complacency, so improvement is either non existent or poor to say the least.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

My moto is "Send a letter give a postie something to do!" :p

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

To be quite honest most of the stuff the postie puts through the letter box these days in unsolicited junk mail, even though I've signed up to say I don't want it:mad:

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Perhaps thats cos nobody likes yeh?:D

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Me too, John.
If I am feeling peevish....I put it back in the post box down the road.
I know this takes more effort than putting it in the paper recycle bag, but as I say, when I am feeling peevish/exasperated, it helps me to vent my spleen

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

shut yer face you:D

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

nice one :mosher:

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

I have to admit having just a twinge of guilt for the poor chap who has to empty the stuff out.
We claim to be a country who is keen to nip waste in the bud, yet we waste time, paper ink, and man hours on something that very few of us actually want.

Then we have to fill our recycling sack with something we would much rather not have.

It is like tha magazines who slip advertising pamphlets, catalogues and such between their pages.
If I am buying a magazine, I give it a shake to dislodge all this bumf, and I leave it in the shop.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

i do the same if i buy a newspaper.:D

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

does that mean you only get to read the front page and the back page cashy? :D:D:D

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

No he only looks at pictures:D

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Margaret, doesn't that mean they'll deliver it to you again? After a couple of weeks his bag could get quite heavy.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

No Gordon, there is no address on them.
Sometimes if I feel really peevish I put them in an unstamped(big) envleope and send them back to the advertiser.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Naughty-but a good idea.
In a similar vein, do you get plastic collection bags(nearly every day) asking you for your cloths,shoes etc. Some, not many, from charities, most from commercial companies who quite often don't even claim a link to a charity. There must be money in it.
They'd have us walking round starkers if they had their way.
Iit wouldn't be so bad if you could use the bags for something else but the're useless.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

There are other ways to post by private firms but they cost.. some are trying to break the monopoly Royal Mail have on letters but there is no way they can compete on the under 50p to anywhere in the UK RM have .. when Royal Mail does get privatised the price of a simple stamp for a letter will go out the roof .. we will be told that competition is best for the consumer.. but we all know it is not .. take a look at gas, electric, trains, water... all were privatised and we are not better off!

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Yes Gordon, I do...but I only give to the British Heart Foundation and Sense.
I used to take things to the Cancer Charity shop too, but they have closed in Accrington.
I do not fill the bags for those companies who say they give the clothes to the poor in the third world. I am sure I read something somewhere about it being a scam, and that they actually sell the stuff.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

i get them bags shoved thro the door regular ... and keep em for when i run out of bin bags .. i wont fill em them and leave em outside .. because im sure it was on watchdog or something they take em and sell em to the people theyre supposed to help ..

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Yes Jen, that is where I saw it too.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

I haven't seen this story in the papers, and I take on board the point about pensions payoffs, but won't we recoup a lot of that cash from selling on Royal Mail and it's assets?

On a side note: if you want to send a simple letter, there are loads of online services like this one that print and post the letter for you. Works out at less than a quid, and that's to quite a few different countries (US, Australia, Canada etc.).

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

I once used a greetings card site, forget its name could have been Moon Pig, but anyway whichever it was it was American owned, and did I regret it, I was then inundated with memberships for online gambling, Pharmacist, everything you could think of as many as 20 or 30 a day, it didn't stop until I changed my service provider :mad:

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

Are you sure the junk mail was because of the card site? Did you tick/untick the box that says dont sent me junk?

We have used one of those sites and I think it was moon pig and we did not get any junk because of it.

Re: say goodbye to affordable postage
 

I'm not sure it was moon pig Neil, I know my Daughter, who was living in Bangkok, sent me a card by this method and I though what a good idea, it was an American company and there was no such box, mind you this was about 7 or 8 years ago