Royal Mail and the (deliberately) concealed hand of the EU.

Privatisation of the mail has resurfaced, as it was bound to do.

No mention anywhere, though, of the primary cause of this, ie EU directives requiring 'liberalisation' and 'full market opening' of postal services. Not in the BBC, anyway, though I don't suppose any of the rest of the British media will have the honesty to mention it, either.

Strange, too, that the media dutifully follow the falling profits/too much competition line they've been given, despite the fact that for the two previous years the whole group has actually been making a profit.

Service has noticeably declined here in Lincolnshire over the past five years. Most of what gets delivered is junk mail, different posties seem to appear every week and there is no consistency in time of delivery (except that it is always late morning at the earliest). Many items either sent to us or posted by us now take a week or more to arrive.

All our politicians conspire to keep the truth from us and the media aid them, irrespective of party bias. The unions oppose the changes but also refuse to point the finger at the EU (they can't, can they? because they support the Labour Party, who are as firmly wedged up the EU's arse as the LibDems).

So you can look forward to higher prices and lower standards. And you can kiss goodbye to six-day delivery as well; EU directives only require a five-day minimum service.

Why Royal Mail Is Totally F****d

Tories plan to sell off all of strike-hit Royal Mail

The Tories will sell off Royal Mail not because it fits their privatising instincts but because they have to. Three EU postal directives compel it.

The Universal Service Obligation, which is to protect the basic system, will also disappear in the form that we know it. So, whatever the politicians say in public and whatever the ignorant wankers in the media parrot, the 6 day delivery is on the way out.

Read it for yourself:

* The Universal Service Obligation (USO):

The USO means that, under EU law, all citizens must have their mail collected and delivered at least once a day, five days a week. But, universal service providers are concerned that it will be impossible to do this under full competition.

Providing such a frequent and ubiquitous service to all citizens – whether they live in the city centre, up a mountain or on a small island – is expensive and, up till now, the “reserved area” was the main mechanism that allowed incumbent operators to finance the cost.

Indeed, the reserved area enabled incumbents to maintain a lucrative monopoly over the delivery of letters weighing less than 50 grammes, thereby allowing them to offset losses made on high-cost customers with profits made on low-cost ones.

Once this monopoly is abolished, the fear is that new market entrants will grab hold of the most profitable activities – such as business-to-business deliveries in cities – while neglecting more isolated customers. This would cause incumbent operators to lose the necessary resources for servicing the more vulnerable.

The final directive however identifyies a number of flanking measures that countries can use in order to ensure that the provision of universal service remains financially viable in a competitive market.

Such measures could include funding mechanisms, such as direct state subsidies, cross-subsidisation from profit-making to loss-making activities or the creation of a compensation fund through the introduction of fees on new service providers or users.

* Flexible funding for USO:

The new Directive would allow governments to finance the cost of providing a universal service in the way that best suits their particular situation, so long as it does not distort the market. The Commission is even open to allowing state aid.

But traditional operators are wary of this option because, in the long term, national budgets are always under pressure. Instead, they favour a “competitor-pays” system, where market entrants would be charged fees, in exchange for market or infrastructure access. Such a ‘compensation fund’ is not endorsed by private companies.

Following a request from Parliament, the Directive includes an amendment requiring the Commission to issue 'detailed guidance' on how to calculate the net cost of the universal service in order to create legal certainty, ensure a level playing field among operators and avoid violations of competition law.

For more information on the various funding alternatives, see our LinksDossier on Financing Universal Service.

All talk about state subsidies is misleading because these, of course, are regulated by the EU.

Observer Journos Accommodate Elephant

Britain's six-day mail deliveries threatened by strike | UK news | The Observer Another article about the destruction of Royal Mail by our brilliant journos at the Observer. Not mentioning the EU once, of course. Getting to be a bit of a habit this, isn't it, Toby?

Royal Mail Shafted By EU

Shackled by EU rules, Royal Mail staggers from shambles to fiasco - Telegraph. Jeff Randall tells the truth about the shambles of Royal Mail, pointing out the decisive role of the EU in it all.

At that time, we still had two deliveries a day, Sunday collections and a national network of post offices. But the business was about to be hit with a sledgehammer from Europe in the form of competition directives, which forced the British government to open up the UK postal market to EU rivals. The new rules took effect in January 2003 (for items weighing more than 100 grams) and January 2006 (50 grams), since when the effort of providing the loss-making universal service while giving up profitable operations to foreign "cherry-pickers" has exacerbated Royal Mail's self-inflicted wounds.

In its eagerness to suck up to Brussels, the Government has created for itself not so much a headache, more an incurable migraine. For although Royal Mail has slimmed down its payroll, eliminated some traditional services and battled to drag the militant element of its workforce out of the Stone Age, it needs to run at a speed hitherto unachieved simply to stand still.

The option for government of increasing subsidies to Royal Mail and the Post Office network as necessary social services – in much the same way that we have poured extra money into schools and hospitals – has been removed by the EU, which has the power to decide how much state aid is allowed.

That's the kind of reporting you won't read in the Guardian or the Observer or find mentioned in the broadcast media - particularly the BBC.

Mandelson! Elephant! Room! Royal Mail! EU! Elephant, Elephant!

Mandelson reiterates the government's masochistic desire to obey EU diktat and part-privatise ('liberalise') the Royal Mail.

Except he doesn't mention of the EU, of course. Nor does the BBC.

The Union Doesn't Mention The Union

The CWU (Communication Workers Union) has placed a full page ad in today's Observer opposing the government's plans for privatising parts of the Royal Mail.

All well and good, except for the fact that it doesn't mention the EU, the cause of all these problems. Something also avoided on the Union's website.

When is everyone going to grow up and face the truth?

Booker Points To EU Postal Elephant

Christopher Booker makes the obvious point about why the Royal Mail is in such a dire condition:

In all the coverage of a possible Labour revolt over Lord Mandelson’s plans to sell off a third of Royal Mail, everyone seems to have forgotten the report from his department last year explaining why our postal service is facing an unprecedented financial crisis. It is no accident that the likely bidders are a Dutch firm, TNT, and a German company, DHL.

The report made clear that the chief cause of Royal Mail’s huge losses was Britain’s keenness to comply with three EU postal services directives, designed to end national postal monopolies by 2010 and to promote “cross-border” integration of the EU’s postal services. As a result Royal Mail had to surrender the most profitable part of its operations, when bulk business mailing was opened up to rival firms. It still has to deliver business mail, for a knock-down price of 14p an item, while the 19 companies that bid successfully for the business of collecting and sorting them cream off all the profits.

This was a major factor turning Royal Mail’s profits into a £179 million annual loss. Driven into desperate cost-cutting exercises, it drastically reduced post-box collections and ended those on Sunday altogether, while making vain attempts to raise revenue, such as its mad “size and weight” pricing scheme. But then EU law kicked in a second time, when our Government was not allowed to make up the resulting deficit under EU state-aid rules.

This was why Nigel Stapleton, head of Postcomm, suggested last year that the only way round the state-aid rules was to part-privatise Royal Mail, thus allowing it to borrow on the open market. No one knows all this better than the great Europhile Lord Mandelson. But it still raises the question as to who would want to invest in a business which EU rules force to run at a loss. The other mystery, of course, is why, in all the coverage given to this vexed issue, no one will explain why it is happening

No chance this info will make its way into the Guardian, the Observer or onto BBC news, is there?

EU Postal Elephant Visible In Room

At last! Something I've been banging on about for ages.

The EU elephant starts becoming visible in the room: British Laws For British People. HT Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Delusional Hopelessness and Criminal Ignorance

In a piece about Royal Mail over on the Site of Hopelessness known as Labourhome, I was interested to read this:

DHL for example use desperate people on the unemployed register coerced in to becoming self employed by the Jobcentre. DHL are paying them 60p per package for delivery in a 15 mile radius of their own home. This result is slave labour and an inferior service. The poor exploited fools are expected to use their own vehicles and petrol of course.

This presumably explains why I'd seen a number of men in PO uniforms delivering mail from their own cars about three weeks ago (I checked it - it was Jan 24).

John Frost, author of the article, continues:

Why on earth would Broon and Mandy promote this type of practice?

Well, John, the answer is: it's the EU (for the umpteenth bloody time).

Does anybody in the British political system and media know what the fuck is actually going on? Or are they all in a state of psychotic denial?

Invisible Elephant Stomps Royal Mail - British Hacks Brainless

The British media again blathering on about the privatisation of the Royal Mail without addressing the real reason for it - the EU. How useless are these people?

I was going to post on this issue myself but EU Referendum have saved me the bother.

Is the EU Worried We're On To Them?

Trawling the internet for further information on the EU's hidden part in destroying the British postal system I came across this. Issued in May, presumably as a response to growing awareness that the EU is directly responsible for legislation that is resulting in the closure of British Post Offices, it's described as a 'Fact Sheet' and yet bears the odd instruction 'not to be quoted from'!

It's basically a deceitful attempt to shift blame from itself onto the British government (and, to be fair, the government is guilty - of allowing the EU to get away with this legislation and of implementing measures well before they should). Look here and here for the truth. A combination of 'liberalisation' (ie enforced competition) and restriction of subsidies is at the core of it.

For instance, if you wondered why the Post Office introduced that insane method a couple of years ago of judging the cost of postage by whether an envelope would fit a specific size 'letterbox', then here's your answer.


An article in today's Observer, 'Mandelson urged to halt Post Office Closures' by Toby Helm, talks about Labour MPs calling on Mandelson to block all further closures. Nowhere in the article does Mr Helm acknowledge the part of the EU in this mess. Possibly because he doesn't know? The idea of Mandelson, having just returned from a 4-year jolly at the EU, facing the bureaucrats down and actually doing something useful is laughable. Mr Helm seems unaware of this irony.

However, not all British journalists are as useless as Toby; Henry Porter continues to wage his lonely war against the government's destruction of our freedoms, with an article attacking that pudding-faced cretin of a Home Secretary after the 'scrapping' of the 42 days bill.