Royal Mail will be sold to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky in a £3.6bn deal, taking the postal service out of British ownership for the first time in 500 years.
Subscribe to our new podcast now, or you’re a silly goose:
https://linktr.ee/pubcast
source
To copy verbatim from that viral tweet about the American postal service – Royal Mail doesn't lose money, it costs money. It's a SERVICE! Shouldn't be treated like a business because it will never be profitable whilst fulfilling it's role, that's why privatising it was a stupid idea in the first place.
Tax agent who rely on it to send certain stuff to HMRC
Well that's the end of the royal mail
The Czech is in the post
RM worker here, I worked all through the pandemic as a key worker, watched my elderly colleagues get ill or worse, die. People who've given their whole life to a company have to watch it give all of its profits to shareholders and pilfers from our pensions. We need nationalised…thank goodness the Labour party are in power…, 🫥🫥 right?? 🙄 :
Edit, grammar.
Royal Mail is not a conventional business it is actually a service that effectively means it has a Act of Parliament of its own its also largely owned by the crown hence the word Royal in the name so the actual Parliament Act will effectively protect it and keep the letters delivery as part of the service that Royal Mail are obliged to offer along with the national network of post offices throughout the nation.
If the Czech can run it better than the Brits Im all for it, Ive lost £100's in revenue just this year, not counting the other years since I started selling online from using Royal Mail and other buisnesses can attest the same. The Worst mail carrier in the UK. Especially international post. Not worth saving with the current 1970's attitude of the workers.
Should have been in Govmnt hands not privatised, alas its too late now to get it back in government hands. It will cost taxpayers too much, If theres no improvement. I will stop using them altogether.
NO they are not Iconic, that ended in the 1950's
Maybe we should sell off the Royals’ too?
Taking back control by selling off the UKs essential assets.
FU fartarge
The public are actually keeping the postal service running. The amount of letters they get is ridiculous in this day and age when everything is digital. The amount of people that get 3 to 5 letters per day, virtually every single day of the year is astonishing. What information do these people need every single day? I personally only get 1 letter per month and typically I don't even need that. If all these people, typically aged 60+ actually bothered to go digital, then the postal service would die off pretty quickly. Once that boomer generation dies off then post will be dead.
So they would open your mail and then scan it and send it by email. That is breach of confidentiality. At one time when my dad, uncle and grandad all had to sign the official secrets act so if that's still the case is that not a breach. Just selling off more of British business to foreigners. Will it be our Air next.
The Royal Mail is owned by the people. Same as Tata and so many other public created services. . This is treason.
It was forced to lose money, to bring it to its knees so corporations could overrule.
Surely when Royal Mail was owned by the public the NHS, councils, the police (all public services) could send letters for free. As RM is now privatised how much is the NHS forking out each year to send letters?
The internet has meant that fewer people are posting letters, but it has also meant that more people are ordering online and so sending parcels. So why the failing business?
It should never have been privatised, just like all the other public services which have been privatised. These things used to be about providing services not about providing yet more money for endlessly greedy shareholders and top management positions. Shareholders particularly are the parasites sucking the money out of the economy and into their own bank accounts – in tax havens of course.
this will "never" happen to NHS,,, no no
The country was put up for sale by Thatcher, the lady who started the demise of the industrial heartland of the country. The crop of politicians since then have jumped when the whip is cracked by the good old USA,we have lost control, and we will not see any financial improvements and quality of life for years.
The method is always the same- buy a business, sell off all the assets and anything else not nailed down, issue a lot of debt, cut services to pay the debt payments for a while, and eventually either sell the husk to someone else who thinks they can pick a bit more off the carcass, or declare bankruptcy after paying yourself and other execs huge bonuses.
Royal mail is already privatised though?
It should be bought back by the government though, it's literally a vital service.
the tories fucked it big time. Was a job for a lifetime 10-15 years ago. then the management absolutely killed it. Absolute neglect of employees, huge bullying issues. And now they don't even pay new starters good wage. Absolute disgrace of a company, killed by shareholders and incompetent management.
Life as a billionaire hedge fund manager always taking advantage of the Europoors is great
Royal Mail ended when George Osborne's pals made £38m overnight at privatisation whilst employees were given shares which they could not sell for five years by which time they had tumbled in value.
Dave Ward might be painting this deal in rosy colours and it is possibly an improvement on the mess created since privatisation but it's still crap.
It has already been scaled back.
It is the same cost to send a card from Penzance to Inverness then Bristol to Inverness 1.65 first class stamp.
This should be changed.
What is it with us privatising INFRASTRUCTURE. Surely vital infrastructure is a national security concern.
He doesn’t ever speak? His autobiographer must have been riveted.
“So…. Why do they call you sphinx?
“…….”
“Oh, so that’s for ME to work out… like a… riddle…” 🤯
This woman presenter has no knowledge of what she's talking about, the company didn't lose 1 billion in the last year, typical of women today all show no substance.
It's Russia's fult 🤣 no sorry its China's fault 🤣 its not the uk government's failure at all ok they are doing everything they can so you can't retire at the age of 75 to 80 years now thats real hope and glory folks👍
Where's reform uk and the gb news crew.
Or do they only care about fake immigration.
DON'T BE DAFT
that died in 2004 when the mail trains ended, the rest is just collateral since, funny how labour wanted public services and don't mind selling off the oldest one
Royal Mail is profitable the money is squandered
Anyone can deliver mail. Royal Mail is a terrible unreliable and outdated service. The workers have unionised themselves out of date by refusing to modernise.
Royal Mail service acts like it’s 1994 not 2024
Rubbish
Union dinosaurs want it renationalised so they can keep workers doing a below average service. Standards way below other services.
I used to work for Ecourier (owned by Royal Mail) and their management was the worst. Used to work hungry
When the Post Office was in Public Hands it was in Profit ! It made £600.000 per year… It had just been modernised at a cost of 1.2 Billion and the conservatives used that debt as a reason to sell it to there Donner's !!!!
Charles I was not 500 years ago. "Charls the man of bloud whose head is cut off" described the event of 30th January, 1649. That'll be 376 years ago in a few weeks. The Diggers launched themselves the following April. We celebrated their 350th anniversary in 1999.
You are correct mail delivery is a social right, well said😊
Before privatisation Royal Mail started to go downhill when the monopoly was lifted and regulated to allow overseas courier companies to compete in the UK
I worked for them pre and post privatisation, at two different times, and this continued debate is just tirelessly boring which goes round in circles because nobody wants to admit the reality. Darren Jones is the only one who seems to talk with any bottle. The real reason RM failed is because of poor leadership, poor leadership by the government, poor leadership in the CWU, and a self interested regulator with their head in the sand.
No tax payer wants to pay more tax to maybe get more junk mail through the door every day, they just want a good parcel service, and a reliable trusting postie. The CWU keep banging on about jobs, but RM have been understaffed for years now with huge retention problems. RM's assets make for a solid and unbeatable parcel service, but the regulator won't allow it. The regulator has RM by the balls and still now, at the point of collapse, refuses to let go!
The bullying culture within RM still gets ignored today, violence wasn't uncommon either, and yet thanks to unions the bullies keep their jobs! Many got paid off too in recent years, it just highlights the incompetence and cloak and dagger mentality within RM. Union Reps out for themselves as usual, and CWU isn't the only ones who have this issue.
People bang on about privatisation being the issue here, it really isn't. That reasoning can't be slapped on every government failing.
During CV it took RM if i recall correctly almost a year to implement photo delivery. They use the same hardware and probably the same poorly developed software as the other delivery companies, supermarkets, etc. Yet other delivery companies were doing it straight of the bat near enough.
RM, CWU, Regulators, MPs, they're (mostly) all just delaying doing any work, taking any responsibility, taking a stand, avoiding rattling cages, and delaying any progress, so they make sure they see out their cushy lives in the same job until retirement comes.
Nothing will change.
You need to look at the basic problem is that sending letters is falling fast. The future with Royal Mail must be in parcels. They need to compete with parcel delivery companies.
Greetings from the Czech Republic. In my opinion, Royal Mail should not be owned by any foreigner. Yes, I'm quite conservative. On the other hand, the main question is why the UK cannot effectively manage Royal Mail itself and why politicians decided as they did. Well, the answer is up to you.
Privatisation CAN work but only when there is adequate competition and a healthy market.
RM doesn’t have that for letters because it has a monopoly over post offices and post boxes, and parcel delivery has become a race to the bottom.
Worse, Post Offices are weighed down by all the non-postal services they do, from pension payments to car registration to passports.
If Royal mail can help me to get an answer as why my currency bank account was shut for no reason with out being able to get the reason because …….thier is reason and not here in geographic times. Fractal nudging is an opportunity but not when the 1 that's been split has been given support on how the property should function in a fractional system where lock down is clock down 1 is3 hands on the same clock is another 3 hands pushud forward making the clock 2 hr forwards in 1 area uk then 1 hour forward in GB its a time spacial over ley🤔 as in fractions cauterisation of the time zone (heart/sleep/tensioned) timed sequence systematic targeting
Royal Mail when they sold it off – another piece of key, critical infrastructure sold off to foreign countries.
Yeah, that’ll work out.
The moneys in parcels not letters , letters could be renationalised.