egafd.com

spider wrote:

> 1. The new provider isn't really going to want to provide a
> service to the Outer Hebrides, so who cares if people have to
> queue at Post Offices etc to find the price. Maybe it will
> encourage them to use another provider.

Who cares? The company who runs the post office, which may be the same company, i.e. a complicated pricing strategy costs them money. If it's not the same company then the post offices would require them to come up with some dosh to pay for the increased workload, otherwise they won't solicit their business. If that leads to stand-off the government (or a postal regulator) would have to step in, because otherwise the postal service would cease to exist.

The other thing: it's a national service, so the government will force the company to provide a service to remote places too. Just like water supply: it would be so much easier for a water company to give the sticks a complete miss, but they would not get a license in the first place.

> 2. Under the new regime there will no subsidies.

Fancy a bet?

> I'd think
> there would be competition laws to preclude this anyway. Royal
> Mail is not a monopoly supplier, and will not be when it's
> under private ownership.

So we don't have subsidised bus services in this country? I think you'll find that we have.

> That means if you subsidise one
> supplier you'll have to be shown to be fair in offering the
> same subsidy to all of the providers.

...which is kind of what happens with bus services, except that competition in this area is a mess anyway. The fact that a law allows competition does not mean that it evolves from nowhere.

Under the bill going through parliament, the Post Office (who runs the counter network) will remain in Public ownership. The Postal Service will be sold off.

If there is an increase in costs for the Post Office to provide the new postal service provider with a customer interface, the new provider can decide whether it wants the PO counter Network to continue to be its customer facing supplier, or it can go elsewhere.

More likely it will just bump the tariffs up to pay the increased cost from the PO network and pass the cost on to the social customer.

Remember it's only the "Birthday Card from Granny" customer who is going to be pissed-off here. The new provider is only going to be interested in big volume posters who do not use the PO network to access the service.

Under the new regime OfCom becomes the new regulator, PostCom goes in the bonfire of the quangos.

Ofcom are going to be incredibly hands-off. I?m sure the legislation will be drafted to that effect; remember the government are going to get the best price they can. That?s how this debate started, the draft bill ?forgot? to mention the Queen?s head on stamps because that was thought to be yet another unnecessary restriction on potential buyers.

OfCom are going to have bigger fish to fry than the postal service.

Comparisons with the Water industry aren't valid because the water industry is a privatised monopoly.

Royal Mail isn't a monopoly now and won't be in the future.

You think the Government are going to sell-off Royal Mail and then subsidise the new privatised provider? Don't you think they have learned anything from the privatisation of the Railways?

You compare it to the bus service. Ask people who live in rural area what kind of bus service they get.

There are villages near me, and I live in central England, who only gets two or three buses a week.

As I set-out in my previous posting, that's similar to the service TNT (one of the potential buyers for Royal Mail) provide to the rural areas in Holland. Rural areas in Holland only get three deliveries a week.

That will most probably be the service rural areas in the UK will get with a privatised service.

Next day service will be available, as it is now, by courier and charged accordingly.

The new provider will look at the services he provides and cost them accordingly.

If you think there are going to be subsidies for services that don't return a profit I think you are misguided.

The postal service won't be classified an essential service in the brave new world.

And another thing.

The Government does not pay a subsidy to the Royal Mail now, why would it want to pay a subsidy to a private contractor?

Over the last thirty years the Postal Service has subsidised the Government by paying over large proportions of its profits to the public purse.

That?s why the Government are so desperate to get rid of it now. They have starved the business of investment for years, kept its prices artificially low, opened its network to competitors at a below cost price, and now it?s in a mess with forecasts of lower volumes they want to off-load it.

The justification the Royal Mail is putting forward for the 11% price rise next April is that they lose 5.3p on every stamped item they have to deliver.

The cost for competitors who use their network for delivery of their customer?s mail is going to increase by 15%. All this is to increase the Royal Mail?s revenues to make it attractive to potential buyers.

The Government does subsidise the PO Counter Network, but that part of the Royal Mail Group is being hived-off and will remain in Public ownership.

The PO Counter Network is going to remain in public ownership because the Government know they can?t bundle it up with the Postal Service because no one would buy the joint business and they are going to have to continue subsidising the Counter Network anyway.

I presume that the Pakistan cricket team would be called telps.
Though I find the reference to cricket to be misleading.
The descriptions of telps suit most politicians, of any nationality.
Are Muslim terrorists telps?
Somehow the word just doesn't sound right.

Why just from stamps ?