UKC

Was it more important to ensure a quick sale than to get a realistic value in the sale? From what I read we appear to be 3/4 billion adrift between what it was worth and what we obtained. And it seems the institutional investors who were going to provide long term stability over private speculators cashed in their shares like opportunistic carpetbaggers anyway.

It seems like a mistake to me, but I'll let those that know about these things convince me otherwise

In reply to toad:

It was clearly a scam.

In reply to toad:

Oh let me see, they asked the institutions ( who would be buying them) what price to sell at.

The institutions could not believe their luck, and underpriced it spectacularly, and bought them cheap, making a mint.

In reply to toad: If it was a mistake, it was a convenient mistake.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

As a postie it suits me just fine!

Cool as beans!

Bye

Paul

In reply to tallpaulselfridge:


As a taxpayer I think it is criminal negligence, or maybe just criminal .

I'm happy that some posties made a few bob , not so happy that those with the most, again , made the most.

In reply to Jim C:

It's the sort of thing we should be f*cking furious about, but for some reason we go "meh".

Viva la revolution!

In reply to Submit to Gravity:


I'm sure people would have preferred to get more money for the taxpayer but surely most people are just happy something else has been privatised, so they're not going to kick up a huge fuss. The country voted Tory. They got a chance to change the voting system so all the people that didn't want a right wing, libertarian society could have their votes count. They voted against it. There's another election coming up and guess whose going to get the most votes?

Why would people complain for getting their wishes granted? You vote Tory because you want a small state. There's a pretty limited number of ways you can do that, one of them is privatisation. Yeah it's a grind they didn't do it very well but I'm sure people think it's a price worth paying to destroy the state and my guess is that will be backed up at the next election.

In reply to Sharp:

The Tories don't have a mandate.

In reply to Sharp:

Most of the country didn't vote Tory. And those that did certainly didn't do so because they wanted to destroy the state. Anymore than the Tories want to destroy the state.

In reply to toad:

BP once grew fat and profitable as a UK state enterprise. The Met Office is a profitable UK state enterprise. The BBC is world-class UK state enterprise with an profitable commercial arm operating around the world. The Ordnance Survey is a profitable UK state enterprise.

In spite of this long history of effective management and profitability in state enterprises, government continues to ignore these lessons and appears to believe that being owned and run by gamblers is a more effective way forward.


Be careful who you vote for.

In reply to Sharp: Are you saying that people shouldn't ever criticise the government? That does sound a bit silly. Or did you mean something else?

In reply to Sharp:


Just how can you get this so wrong? Were you asleep at the last general election and completely unaware of the difficulties Cameron had in forming a coalition? … precisely because he hadn't got a mandate? It went on for three days after the vote, IIRC. For a while it looked as if he might even have to form a coalition with Labour.

In reply to Sharp:

in which alternative universe was this? Even after being rather economical with the true about the NHS etc they still couldnt get a majority.


I am really not sure how you managed to link these two together. You do realise the fptp simply favours a two party system rather than any specific policy.



Likelihood is not the tories but more likely a coalition again.

In reply to Sharp:

Correction to my last post. It took the Conservatives 6 days, not 3, to form a coalition government after the General Election failed to give them a majority.

In reply to toad:


It's a good rule of thumb that the government are always pretty naive in striking deals with the private sector. This is because the people in charge are not businessmen, they are career civil servants and politicians. Same can be said about IT contracts, PFI, etc.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

But not St Vince the All-knowing, surely? He once had a proper job, so believes himself to be always right. And St Vince has declared this to be A Good Deal For The Taxpayer, so therefore it must be.

In reply to andy:

Was that the same sort of proper job as Alex Salmond once had?

In reply to toad:

Agreed. We all knew we were getting boned at the time and as time has gone by this has been confirmed. The heads of those within government that arranged the share price should be rolling.

Regarding the proportional representation vote as raised above, this was probably the most shambolic display of British democracy ever; nobody turned up to vote.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:


He was the King of Kenya in about 1864 - it's when he developed his absolute conviction in his own omnipotence. Cock.

In reply to toad:

So you've got some people saying Royal Mail was undervalued and others saying they had to include PAF to boost the value ?

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26605375

In reply to toad:



Don't forget the 8 billion or so pension liabilities. In a rare display of socialism the Govt has kindly let the taxpayer deal with that. If only we had a time machine to see what the conservatives though about that when labour was in power...

“I fear the [Labour] government is going to steal £22bn of pension assets, dump the liability as a mortgage on future generations and dress it up as the salvation of the Royal Mail. Their plan to steal the pension assets to help reduce their borrowing figures while taking out a massive mortgage to cover Post Office pension liabilities for 50 years is nothing more than a massive accounting scam." - Alan Duncan

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

I'm saying people shouldn't vote a right wing government in and then be surprised when they privatise stuff.

Chambers:

Semantics, they will reduce the size of the state to pre-1948 levels by 2018. To me that's destroying the state and generations of work to create it.

Gordon:

They got 6/7% more votes than Labour IIRC. But like I said, we had a chance to change the way our voting system works, if AV was in place in the last election the Tories would have had a mandate for fuck all. We had a chance to change that and we didn't want it, everyone who didn't vote Tory could have gone out and voted for AV and maybe they'd have had less opportunity to fuck the country come next election time.

Anyway, the OP was why aren't people creating a fuss over Royal Mail and the answer is the same as why people aren't creating a fuss about the disabilities mess, about Michael Gove, about top down reorganisation of the NHS, about destroying (yes, destroying) the welfare state, about cosying up to big business again, about creating another housing bubble...no one creates a fuss because unfortunately were quite a right wing country and this is by and large what we want, to get rid of the benefits scroungers, to pay less tax and I'm all right jack.

In reply to ebygomm:


Care to explain why the two are mutually exclusive?

In reply to Sharp: Not all the people did vote them in. Most didn't, which has been pointed out. People (who might not have voted them) are just criticising them, which you seem to object to. Has anybody said they were surprised?

In reply to toad:

For all the political comments about the Tory's on this, it was Vince Cable who drove this privatisation through. Let us at least get the facts right on this.

Both Labour and Tory party's had in the past few years tried to privatise the Royal Mail and had failed. So it strikes me that there was general consensus that it should go. When all said and done it is a glorified UPS/ Fed-EX/DHL these days as most of its money is made from parcels.

In reply to Sharp:

Unfortunately, before the government sold Royal Mail off on the cheap, they loaded the multi billion £ pension fund deficit onto the taxpayer.

In reply to toad:

It was the only way of getting shot of an old-fashioned, overweight, inefficient organisation riddled with outdated labour practices and attitudes. No modern, efficient courier organisation would have touched it with a bargepole; the massive profit was the "dash" that made a dead duck saleable.

In reply to Sharp:


If the Tories hadn't done it then Labour would have! Don't forget Labour tried to privatise Royal Mail. They also forced through competition way earlier than they had to causing much damage to RM.

In reply to toad:
But were the losses outweighed by the (putative) long term putative benefits of privatisation? I'm none the wiser

In reply to Rigid Raider:


I agree with much of that but I'm struggling to think of a modern, efficient courier organisation in the UK. Especially one that has the reach and volume of RM in delivering letters and packets.

In reply to Rigid Raider:


How does that work? To make a massive profit by selling shares, you have to find a buyer who is prepared to fund your massive profit. Given that such a buyer had to exist, why not sell to them in the first place and claim the massive profit for the state?

"socialists" tend to ooze hatred for evil "capitalists" who are greedy. But they are the ones wanting everything. 100% of valuation from privatisations. They are the ones that think their contribution (traditionally manual labour) should deserve nearly all the money made.

In reply to toad:

I suspect a few on here with pensions would have done well out of it. Most of the 'priority investors' were pension funds who off-loaded pretty quickly.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Submit to Gravity said "It's the sort of thing we should be f*cking furious about, but for some reason we go "meh"."

The whole point is that people aren't really bothered, I didn't object to anyone criticising them. I suggested people aren't criticising them because they don't care.

In reply to Indy:


Hmm, that's probably true. Well people should have voted Lib dem...no wait

In reply to Sharp: How do you know people aren't that bothered? How do you know people aren't critisizing them? And again, who is surprised?

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Ask Submit, it was his point.

In reply to Sharp:

I think the complain is mostly the price at which it was sold. Most analysts in the city warned that the government was selling too low and they did not listen to the advice.
Only one thing we can conclude from this: our government is either incompetent or corrupt.

In reply to Sharp: Are you a politician?

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Not yet old chum, not yet. I've still got a few goats to sacrifice and I only scored 3 at the spring peasant shooting meet up at Daddy's estate so things aren't looking too good.

In reply to Sharp:


This is often trotted out as carte blanche for a Government to do whatever they like; 'well, you voted for them'.

The thing is, we don't vote for a party based on a single issue; we vote on their entire manifesto (I'm being generous here, and assuming people do read and consider the manifesto...). We therefore have to vote on the balance of policies, which means it's entirely possible to vote for a party, and yet disagree with some of their policies.

Nothing is simply black and white. Or red and blue...

Was this not the usual MO in the 1980s? Went Titus Upp with BP, but usually privatisations were a bit of a giveaway.

In reply to captain paranoia:
To be fair, you guys are probably right about the voting/mandate thing but I do think people are generally uncaring about the scope of the changes the Tories are bringing to the country. Maybe I'm just bitter because I was naive enough to grow up under the illusion that Britain was a reasonably forward looking, liberal country that cared about things like the wefare state, education and looking after those worse off than yourself (elderly, physically/mentally disabled esp.). Now we're ripping apart the state, with Michael Gove at the helm of a return to Victorian schooling and leaving the vulnerable out to rot while we all moan about how hard it is to get a mortgage and other middle class problems. It seems like every year that passes it becomes more clear we're a backwards, right-leaning bigoted waste land, loosely tacked onto the edge of Europe but still living in the dark ages and longingly looking back to the days of good old blighty.

In reply to Sharp:

I think generally it still is, isn't it? (Posted from the security of living in a yorkshire dales village where we've all chucked in enough money for the library to keep going). But generally i think that folks care about their fellow man?

In reply to toad:


What losses , I understand they were profit making.
We now lose those profits, (but get to keep the pension liabilities. )

My guess is they will also not have to deliver to anywhere in the UK for the same price forever. I think that will go,,as it has a time limited protection.
( That is , they hide the difficult bits, kick them into the long grass, and will slip them in later, at a convenient moment - when the voters are distracted)

In reply to JMGLondon:


But were given priority status because they promised they would be in it for the long term not just for a quick buck ( but lied)

In reply to Sharp:

Couldn't agree more. This quick article sums up how far Britain has fallen quite well http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/adam-ramsay/scotland-isnt-different...

In reply to andy:


Until they're old, or smelly, or crazy, or start to cost too much or otherwise step outside the picture of what people deem acceptable. Then we're all too happy to look the other way.