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December 2005
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Recent Posts Saying goodbye to Clive Cussler |
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| Post | 20th December 2005, 13:00 | |
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The BBC reports today that as of 1st January, the delivery of mail in the UK will be opened up to full competition. I'm not happy with these plans. As a 'customer' of the Royal Mail, I have over recent years seen a decline in their service, with increased prices and deliveries which are less frequent and later in the day. This has been paralleled with numerous reports in the press of their lack of profitability. These are the reasons that most people seem to think (at least in the media) are reasons in favour of opening the industry up to full private competition, as it will make the Royal Mail have to manage themselves to be more competitive. From my perspective however, this is precisely the wrong thing to do. The decline in the Royal Mail over the past few years isn't because it is any less competitive than it has ever been, but is because a decent postal service cannot be run at a profit with only a low cost to customers - it needs to be subsidised by government. It's exactly the same as train companies - running trains is not a profitable business to be in. This is why train services in this country are so bad, because costs for the companies have to be cut to an absolute minimum to make any sort of profit. (Virgin trains are generally an exception, however I suspect that the ticket prices are subsidised by other Virgin enterprises - Haywards Heath to Birmingham on Virgin trains costs less than Haywards Heath to London on Southern trains). This is the entire reasoning behind having nationalised industries - so that they can be run in a not-for-profit environment without suffering from competition, with low prices for the customer. Why people have escaped noticing this I can't imagine. We, as a country, seem to have moved into the extreme capitalistic view of the free market - nationalised industries are no longer cherished as the public services that they should be. Competition is not always good, and it's about time our government remembered this. The BBC also has this report which I was very amused by. |
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