April Fool's Joke

[David Johnson]

The selling off of Royal Mail.

1. We all owned the Royal Mail. It was a national asset. It was making a profit.
2. The coalition decided to flog it. As a sweetener, the government took responsibility for the entire pension liabilities of the Royal Mail.
3. The price of ?3.30 a share was far too low according to all independent financial commentators.
4. The government lost the taxpayer ?750 million in one day as the price soared on the first day of the sale. The shares are still 70% higher than the initial sale price.
5. Vince Cable allowed 16 long term investors priority access to the shares because he wanted a "stable long term and supportive shareholder base".
6. 6 of the priority investors sold off their shares within weeks of the float, making a real killing. Only 12% of the shares are still held by "priority investors".
7. Hedge funds bought the shares sold by priority investors. The very hedge funds described by Cable as "spivs and gamblers".
8. True to form, the hedge funds quickly got to grips with maximising short term profits. Two days before their results were due to be announced the Royal Mail announced the loss of 1300 net jobs in the Mail.
9. Who picks up the bill for unemployment benefit, housing benefit, council tax benefit etc. etc. for those 1300? The taxpayer.

Hilarious eh?

[max_tranmere]

I saw on the news today that someone has called for Vince Cable's resignation over this. I can't remember who, I only saw a snippet of the news report. If he does quit he will cash in on the contacts he made whilst in government and end up earning ten times as much as he did in government for doing less hours. It's a wonderful world we live in...

[cockneygeezer2009]

Well the 'priority investers' are laughing. All the way to the bank.
I wonder who'll they'll vote for in the next election?

[David Johnson]

I wonder who they'll fund in the next election?

[sparky]

While pushing the Royal Mail sale through far too cheaply the government were talking about price caps on energy suppliers and finalising the guaranteed price deal with EDF (French) and Chinese investors for the construction of Hinkley Point C power station.
Postal prices will inevitably rise to include a profit and shareholder dividends so in a few years will the government want a postal price cap?

We now have rail fares that generally risen well above inflation since privatisation and some e.g. Manchester - London massively. Loads more money is constantly wasted on the franchising letting process and administration, even when they don't c*ck up.
Again many of the operators are foreign including Arriva who are a division of Deutsche Bahn, owned by the German government .....

Once upon a time energy, water, telephone, rail etc were known as utilities not industries reflecting them being essential services.

How do we get a government that will again take a long term view instead of seeking short term income from selling the family silver?

[David Johnson]

"How do we get a government that will again take a long term view instead of seeking short term income from selling the family silver?"

Well it clearly isn't going to be voting for the Tories who have sold off nearly everything that wasn't nailed down over the last 30 years, UKIP (free marketeers who tend not to believe in this market regulation stuff and things like employee rights), the Lib Dems whose main representative, Vince Cable was largely responsible for the total cockup that is the Royal Mail selloff.

As for Labour, they are hampered by a printed media which is almost totally owned by Tory barons so quite often they find that the only way they can get into power e.g. 1997 is to ape a slightly watered down version of the Tories. They also appear to suffer from a poverty of vision.

A long term approach in British industry and government will only be achieved by a radical change in how financial markets operate in terms of the drive to maximise short term profits above everything else and a complete revamp of the relationship between corporates and their workforce in which currently the workforce are more often than not regarded as shit on the Board's shoes.

And who is going to provide this radical reworking? God knows!

[David Johnson]

!boring!