Tag Archives: Royal Mail

Why are we even discussing this? the CBI really IS scaremongering over Labour’s nationalisation plans

The Confederation of British Industry has started its usual pre-election campaign against the Labour Party – with the usual nonsense claims about Labour nationalisation policies.

It seems we are being asked to believe that bringing national utilities, the railways and the Royal Mail back into public ownership will cost the Treasury £196 billion, with no concurrent benefits to the economy.

I have to agree with Labour on this; it is nothing but scaremongering – and not very clever scaremongering, at that.

For a start, most of the utilities and railway firms Labour wants to take back into public ownership are currently owned by foreign firms – many of them owned by foreign governments.

That’s a lot of UK citizens’ money going abroad, right there. Bringing those firms back into public ownership would bring huge amounts of money back into the UK economy, instead of subsidising services in other lands.

We have been led to believe that Vince Cable sold our Royal Mail to hedge funds. Who knows where they’re putting the profits? That cash certainly doesn’t seem to be going back into the business. A tax haven, perhaps?

If so, then bringing the Royal Mail back into public ownership not only safeguards our postal service but brings huge amounts of money back into the UK economy.

That’s just off the top of my head.

The CBI admits its analysis is flawed, in that it only concentrates on the costs of any renationalisation, and explicitly does not consider any benefits.

The claims of this organisation have no value at all.

Source: Labour plans to renationalise utilities, railways and Royal Mail would cost £196bn, CBI claims | The Independent

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Crisp maker’s recycling concession to campaigners is like a red rag to a bull

Walkers crisp company is to be commended for launching a scheme to recycle its plastic packets – if not for the way it came about.

The firm only gave in to pressure from campaigners after Royal Mail stepped in, sick of people posting empty crisp packets back to the Leicester factory without envelopes.

Walkers reckons it had been in negotiations with recycling firm TerraCycle since the start of the year, after 38 Degrees raised a 330,000-signature petition.

But campaigners say the manufacturer still has a long way to go before it reaches its target of making all packaging fully recyclable, compostable or biodegradable by 2025.

For anti-plastic, pro-recycling campaigners, the message is clear – petition firms, by all means…

But couple this with methods that make the same firms a burden on others – like the Royal Mail – and you’ll get results.

It doesn’t strike me as the most honourable way of behaving – but we’ve seen that there is no honour in the way plastic is poisoning the planet.

Campaigners can only conclude that the rule must be: Do what works.

Snack firm Walkers has announced a recycling scheme – after Royal Mail begged campaigners not to post empty crisp packets without envelopes.

From December, snack fans will be able to post used bags – in envelopes, for free – directly to a recycling company.

The company said it had been in talks about the scheme since the beginning of the year.

It will involve packets being turned into plastic items such as benches, watering cans and plant pots by recycling firm TerraCycle.

Source: Walkers crisp packets recycling scheme announced – BBC News

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Silly Brexiter MP is outraged that company he privatised doesn’t care what he wants

How stupid can he be? Did nobody tell daft David Jones that the whole point of privatisation is to make sure a former government utility doesn’t have to do what MPs say?

What a silly Rupert!*

Tory MP Dave Jones consistently voted for the privatisation of the Royal Mail – and now he’s angry because the government doesn’t have any say in what the now-private company does.

That’s stupid, and then some!

One has to ask what was going through the minds of the Tory-voting people of Clwyd West when they put this Londoner into the Parliamentary seat for their constituency in 2005 (and at every election since). Fortunately his majority is only around 3,000, so he’ll be out on his ear next time.

Mr Jones told that great bastion of good sense, The Express (ha ha): “It is outrageous. This is a new and important chapter in the history of this country – and they have got a positive duty to mark it.

“If they can mark our accession to it then they should mark the country’s liberation.”

Well, Dave, back in 1973, Royal Mail was owned by the government and MPs like you had a say in what it did.

But – thanks to MPs like you! – Royal Mail is now a private company and its bosses couldn’t care less what you want.

They’re probably grateful that you sold it to them at a rock-bottom, knock-down, massive-loss-to-the-taxpayer – but not enough to actually change any of their business decisions.

Under the Tories (1979-1997 and 2010-present), and under a right wing Tony Blair-led Blue-Labour party (1997-2010), Britain has now endured a depressing 38 years of our essential public assets being sold off.

Now, with absolutely essential public assets like the NHS, the Police service and Schools coming under stealth privatisation by the Tories, a huge surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn’s platform of renationalisation showed that a huge proportion of the general public refuse to be fooled by a completely discredited, economically bankrupt neoliberal dogma any longer.

However, one cherished public service the Tories managed to just about get away with flogging off a few years ago was Royal Mail – a privatisation that Tory MP Dave Jones seemed to have completely forgotten about today.

Yes, Mr Jones is apoplectic that Royal Mail won’t print a Brexit stamp. He told the Express that it was ‘outrageous’ Royal Mail wouldn’t print one by attempting to point out their supposed hypocrisy because they printed a commemorative stamp when we joined the EEC in 1973.

Source: Tory MP ‘outraged’ that utility the Tories privatised won’t do what he tells them to anymore | Evolve Politics

*I know his name isn’t Rupert really – and apologies to all Ruperts who aren’t idiotic Tories. The name was attached to an idiotic Tory – not by me – years ago and it stuck.

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Royal Mail workers have voted to strike by a huge majority

What are the Tories going to do now?

They ruled that strikes would only be legal if more than 50 per cent of a workforce voted in favour. Here are the stats on the Royal Mail strike ballot:

The decision by Royal Mail workers to strike is Democracy in Action:

•111,000 Posties
•73.7% Turnout
•89% Vote to Strike
•72,873 v 8,954

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) October 3, 2017

So posties are going on strike. And who can blame them?

The CWU believes it is a “watershed” moment for unions as well as the Royal Mail, which it has accused of following a “relentless” programme of cost-cutting to maximise short-term profits and shareholder returns.

The union accused the company of “unilaterally” closing its defined benefit, or final salary, pension scheme, with new entrants going into an “inferior” scheme which will leave them in “pensioner poverty”.

The union is also in dispute over pay and issues such as delivery office closures.

The union’s deputy general Secretary Terry Pullinger said: “This ballot result is hugely significant and demonstrates a strength of feeling that can only be translated as a massive vote of no confidence in the managerial leadership of the Royal Mail Group and the direction that they advocate.

“Any sense of vocational spirit and working together with management has been lost in a climate of fear and insecurity. This massive failure in trust has created a breakdown in relationships and a toxic environment where working together to solve difficult problems has become almost impossible.

“The managerial leadership has failed and should resign or be sacked. This is a dispute about honour and we refuse to simply stand aside.”

Source: Royal Mail faces first national strike since it was privatised

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It’s time to kill this Lib Dem revival – by reminding voters of the facts

Amanda Broom, who defected from the Tories, and Daisy Benson (right) the Lib Dems’ prospective parliamentary candidate for Yeovil, pictured in Chard town centre. Once again the Liberal Democrats are winning votes by making promises they have no intention of keeping [Image: Adrian Sherratt for the Guardian].

It has been said that the Liberal Democrats are winning back votes in a big way because they are positioning themselves as the party of ‘Remain’; they want to stand for those who still want the UK to stay in the European Union.

What a bold statement!

As if the Liberal Democrats had any say at all in the matter. And even if they did, there is no guarantee that they would stand by their word.

Doesn’t anybody remember the Liberal Democrat promise not to increase tuition fees?

They had a chance to achieve this aim as part of the Coalition government they formed with the Conservatives – and what did they do instead?

They tripled tuition fees.

That isn’t all they did, either.

They sold off the Royal Mail – on the cheap – to hedge funds, if memory serves.

They supported the Tory austerity agenda to the hilt, no matter who it killed. That’s right – killed. The Liberal Democrats are as responsible for the Bedroom Tax deaths, the ESA deaths, and the jobseeker deaths, as Iain Duncan Smith and all his DWP minions.

Finally, voters need to remember that the current leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, has made it absolutely plain that his party would go back into coalition with the Conservatives at the first opportunity to do so.

The Conservatives have positioned themselves as the party of Brexit. They are determined to steer the UK out of the EU, no matter what.

So what do you think the Liberal Democrats will do, if they go into coalition with the Tories?

That’s right, Remainers – you are following a falsehood.

The Liberal Democrats will betray you at their very first opportunity.

So why on Earth are you voting for them?

Lib Dem strategists are pinning their hopes for rebuilding after the dire results in 2015 on a resurgence in the south-west, their former heartland, where the party lost all 10 of its seats in the last election. Since then, the party has been quietly notching up its best council byelection results in 20 years, with a net gain of 28 seats compared with net losses for Labour of four seats, Ukip of three and the Conservatives of 33 seats.

On paper, this part of the country does not look like a happy hunting ground for the fervently pro-remain party, because of the high number of leave voters in the south-west. Yet more than half of those byelections gains were in the West Country, most recently in Taunton and Teignbridge in early December, with the seats all seeing swings upwards of 20%.

Source: ‘Morale is really high’: Lib Dems scent revival in south-west | Politics | The Guardian

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Why SHOULD the government suck money OUT of the economy?

George Osborne: Mouth open, mind shut.

Economists are probably lining up right now to demonstrate that George Osborne is a fool.

The Chancellor is trying to persuade us that aiming for an immediate budget surplus is good policy. Experts disagree.

Very quick off the mark is Professor Simon Wren-Lewis in his Mainly Macro blog. He has already pointed out that fiscal tightening is a terrible idea when interest rates are at their zero lower bound (ZLB), as they are at the moment – if economic growth falters, then monetary policy cannot come to the rescue because interest rates are already as low as they can be.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reckons that there’s no reason for the government to reduce debt from its current level of 80 per cent of GDP, as long as the market is happy to keep buying it up. This Writer has issues with that, because it is not advisable for the UK or any other country to become a debt-servicing economy. However, the principle that there is no need for drastic action is sound.

Professor Wren-Lewis also examined a few of the current arguments in support of Osborne and rubbished them in his usual amiable way:

Osborne’s plan may provide scope for dealing with further ‘Great Recessions’ without running out of what the IMF calls “fiscal space” (the amount of extra debt into which the UK could fall before there was any need for serious concern) – but this would demand that ‘Great Recessions’ take place much more often in the future than the past.

The claim that we should reduce the debt burden for future generations is dismissed as perverse, as it means “the costs of reducing debt would largely fall on the same generation that suffered as a result of the Great Recession”.

Leading on from this, he points out that any claim that an individual would want to pay their debts down quickly is not accurate, for the very good reason that nations are not like individuals; they are more like corporations. Firms live with permanent debt because that debt has paid for the capital purchases they have made: “The state has plenty of productive capital…. If we paid back most government debt within a generation, we would be giving that capital to later generations without them making any contribution towards it.”

From here it is fairly easy to see that selling off national assets (like the Royal Mail or Eurostar – or any of the profit-making utility firms, back in the 1980s) is a bad idea, because the national corporation (the UK) then fails to benefit from the proceeds of all its investment. The railways are an even worse case, because the country is subsidising them with more money than when they were a nationalised industry, but receives none of the profits.

Narrow down your definition of what is happening even further and we see that George Osborne is making the poor pay – with squeezes on benefits – in order to allow the rich to benefit; they will own the assets that the government is selling off while paying nothing towards the capital costs discussed above.

So – unless you are one of the very few people rich enough to profit from Osborne’s policy, do you really want to support him now?

This blog would be particularly interested in hearing from working people who voted Conservative last month:

Did you realise that Osborne would be penalising you and your descendants?

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Do you know the horrifying facts about your own MP?

Don’t let the appearance of serious concern fool you – Roger Williams has done more harm than good in the last five years. Can you say that your MP hasn’t?

You can tell there’s an election on the way when the dreaded Liberal Democrat Block Graph appears in your letterbox.

“Only Roger Williams MP and the Lib Dems can stop the Tories here in Brecon & Radnorshire!” today’s leaflet screamed, while the graph pointed to a 10 per cent turnout for Labour (highlighted in orange – isn’t that the Lib Dems’ colour?) from 2010 to illustrate its point.

But 2010 was a long time ago. Since then, Roger has betrayed us all in Parliamentary votes many times.

Are you upset about the funding cuts to local government services? Roger voted for those cuts.

Struggling to pay your council tax? Roger voted strongly to make councils responsible for helping people pay – and for reducing the amount spent on that support.

Are you unemployed, sick or disabled? Roger voted strongly for cuts to welfare benefits, and for the uprating cap that means benefits don’t rise in line with prices.

He voted against investing public money in guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time out of work.

He voted to increase VAT, but not to increase taxes for the immensely rich – and he fully supported cutting the rate of corporation tax, so rich firms became even richer.

Remember the bankers who caused the financial crisis? Roger voted against clawing back money from them. He refused to support the bankers’ bonus tax.

Remember the botched privatisation of the Royal Mail? Roger fully supported it.

He voted very strongly in favour of ending financial support for people aged 16-19 in training and further education.

He voted very strongly in favour of restricting access to justice so that only the rich can get a fair hearing in court, by restricting the scope of Legal Aid – and he voted for the creation of so-called ‘secret courts’.

He is in favour of the waste of money known as Police and Crime Commissioners, against restricting rises in rail fares, very strongly for selling off England’s state-owned forests and against green energy.

Oh – and he voted for the Bedroom Tax too.

He also voted very strongly in favour of the Tories’ creeping privatisation of the National Health Service.

His leaflet states: “The Tories want to cut pay for Llandrindod Wells’ nurses and teachers. Who can stop them?”

Not Roger Williams, obviously. His record shows he has been cheering them on.

This writer actually helped vote Roger Williams into his Parliamentary seat, back in 2001. Admittedly it was a tactical choice, to make sure that the constituency did not go to a Conservative candidate.

Now I know that, given the chance, Roger won’t act in the best interest of the people, but in those of whoever gives him his orders that day.

But never mind my MP – how has yours behaved? You can find out on theyworkforyou.com

What you discover may surprise you!

And Llandrindod Wells’ nurses and teachers?

I would rather rip Roger’s throat out with my own teeth than make him responsible for their pay and conditions.

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What would YOU ask David Cameron in Public Prime Minister’s Questions?

Mile-wide: Mr Miliband explained his idea to bridge the gulf between the public and the Prime Minister to Andrew Marr.

Ed Miliband engaged in a particularly compelling piece of kite-flying today (July 27) – he put out the idea that the public should have their own version of Prime Minister’s Questions.

Speaking to Andrew Marr, he said such an event would “bridge the ‘mile-wide’ gulf between what people want and what they get from Prime Minister’s Questions”, which has been vilified in recent years for uncivilised displays of tribal hostility between political parties and their leaders (David Cameron being the worst offender) and nicknamed ‘Wednesday Shouty Time’.

“I think what we need is a public question time where regularly the prime minister submits himself or herself to questioning from members of the public in the Palace of Westminster on Wednesdays,” said Mr Miliband.

“At the moment there are a few inches of glass that separates the public in the gallery from the House of Commons but there is a gulf a mile wide between the kind of politics people want and what Prime Minister’s Questions offers.”

What would you ask David Cameron?

Would you demand a straight answer to the question that has dogged the Department for Work and Pensions for almost three years, now – “How many people are your ‘welfare reform’ policies responsible for killing?”

Would you ask him why his government, which came into office claiming it would be the most “transparent” administration ever, has progressively denied more and more important information to the public?

Would you ask him whether he thinks it is right for a Prime Minister to knowingly attempt to mislead the public, as he himself has done repeatedly over the privatisation of the National Health Service, the benefit cap, the bedroom tax, food banks, fracking…? The list is as long as you want to make it.

What about his policies on austerity? Would you ask him why his government of millionaires insists on inflicting deprivation on the poor when the only economic policy that has worked involved investment in the system, rather than taking money away?

His government’s part-privatisation of the Royal Mail was a total cack-handed disaster that has cost the nation £1 billion and put our mail in the hands of hedge funds. Would you ask him why he is so doggedly determined to stick to privatisation policies that push up prices and diminish quality of service. Isn’t it time some of these private companies were re-nationalised – the energy firms being prime examples?

Would you want to know why his government has passed so many laws to restrict our freedoms – of speech, of association, of access to justice – and why it intends to pass more, ending the government’s acknowledgement that we have internationally-agreed human rights and restricting us to a ‘Bill of Rights’ dictated by his government, and tying us to restrictive lowest-common-denominator employment conditions laid down according to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a grubby little deal that the EU and USA were trying to sign in secret until the whistle was blown on it?

Would you ask him something else?

Or do you think this is a bad idea?

What do you think?

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The ‘Dunce of Downing Street’ can no longer rely on lies

For someone who was educated at Eton and Oxford, it seems strange that David Cameron never learns his lesson.

Today in Prime Minister’s Questions he got on the wrong side of an argument on the Coalition government’s botched sale of the Royal Mail and committed every MP’s cardinal offence: He knowingly lied to Parliament.

Ed Miliband had caught him out with a question about share prices, pointing out that Royal Mail shares had been sold far too cheaply. Referring to Cameron, he described the Prime Minister as “not so much the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, more the ‘Dunce of Downing Street’.

Cameron hotly denied that his government had bungled the sale, and in response to Miliband’s claim that nobody had wanted it, he told Parliament that Labour had planned to do the same. “It’s in their manifesto!” he ejaculated.

It isn’t.

I have a copy of Labour’s 2010 manifesto on my computer, so I was able to check it immediately and found no mention of any such sell-off. Cameron was inaccurate.

Not only that, but unless the memory cheats, this is not the first time Cameron has made such a claim. His advisors would certainly have informed him of any inaccuracies, so any repetition is a conscious decision. Cameron was lying.

This blog has covered the offence known as Contempt of Parliament in considerable detail before (mostly in relation to serial offender Iain Duncan Smith). By rights, anybody misleading Parliament who does not apologise and put the record straight should be expelled from the House. The current government seems to be ignoring this (for obvious reasons).

Labour’s Jon Ashworth raised a point of order after PMQs, demanding that Cameron return to the Commons to correct himself. Fat chance.

A spokesperson insisted that the language in the Labour manifesto was “similar” to a 2009 plan by Lord Mandelson to sell off 30 per cent of the Royal Mail and prepare the remainder for modernisation.

This means nothing. If it isn’t in the manifesto, Cameron can’t claim that it is.

But then, Cameron seems very confused about manifesto pledges. He once claimed that Andrew Lansley’s reorganisation of the NHS in England had been a part of the Conservative Party’s 2010 manifesto, for example – despite having himself ordered that nobody should mention it in the run-up to that year’s election, in case it put voters off supporting the Tories.

I leave you with Martin Rowson’s cartoon on the Royal Mail sale, for Tribune magazine.

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Death of democracy is confirmed as Cameron ignores the will of Parliament

The not-so-great dictator: It seems David Cameron’s government is now ignoring all attempts to hold it to account.

Ladies and gentlemen of the United Kingdom, your plight is worsening: The government now no longer pays any attention to the decisions of your Parliamentarians.

You’ll remember that a debate was held on Monday, in which MPs called for an inquiry into the effect of changes to the benefit system – introduced by the Conservative-led Coalition government – on the incidence of poverty in this country; the question was whether poverty was increasing as a result of the so-called reforms.

Parliament voted massively in favour of the inquiry (125 votes for; two against), as reported here.

We considered it a great victory at the time, and looked forward to the commissioning of the inquiry and its eventual report.

Now that dream is in tatters as Michael Meacher, the MP who brought the motion to Parliament, has reported that nothing is to happen and the government is ignoring the vote.

It seems he is blaming this partly on the media because “it wasn’t reported” – and he has a point; only 2,500 people have so far read the article on Vox Political, and that’s not nearly enough interest to worry David Cameron and his unelected cadre.

This turn of events raises serious questions about the role of Parliament in holding the government of the day to account, influencing legislation and taking effective initiative of its own.

Perhaps we should be glad that this has happened, because the illusion that we have any kind of democracy at all has been, finally, stripped away.

(On a personal note, this saddens me greatly as it confirms the belief of a very rude Twitter user who accosted me on that site earlier the week to inform me that democracy died many years ago, and I was deluded in trying to save it now. What a shame that such a person has been proved correct.)

Here are the facts, according to Mr Meacher – and they make bitter reading: “The chances of influencing … legislation are negligible because the government commands a whipped majority at every stage of a bill’s passage through the commons.

“Parliament can make its voice heard, but it can hardly change anything that the government has decided to do.

“The only rare exception is when there is a revolt on the government benches which is backed by the opposition, and even then when the government lost a vote on that basis last year on the EU budget, it still ostentatiously dismissed the vote as merely ‘advisory’.

“Nor, it seems from Monday’s vote, can parliament take any effective initiative of its own either.”

He said newly-instituted systems that followed the expenses scandal are already disappearing:

“The backbench business committee, which for the first time gives parliamentarians some control over what is debated in the house, is being sidelined and decisions on its motions ignored.
“The promised house business committee, which would share negotiations between government and parliament over the passage of all business put before the house, has been quietly dropped.
“Only the election of members of select committees by the house, not by the whips, has so far survived, but one cannot help wondering if that too will be taken back by the party establishments over time.”

This is, as Mr Meacher states, a major constitutional issue – especially as our current government was not elected by the people but created in a dirty backroom deal, and its actions have no democratic mandate at all; nobody voted for the programme of legislation that we have had forced – forced – upon us.

Did you vote for the privatisation of the National Health Service? I didn’t.

Did you vote for the privatisation of the Royal Mail? I didn’t.

Did you vote for the increase in student fees? I didn’t.

Did you vote for the Bedroom Tax? I didn’t.

Did you vote for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal? I didn’t.

Did you vote for the Gagging law? I didn’t.

Did you vote to protect the bankers who caused the financial crisis from having to deliver compensation to us? I didn’t.

Did you vote to protect tax avoidance schemes? I didn’t.

There are many more examples I could list.

Mr Meacher suggests possible ways to reassert the authority of Parliament, but none of them will have any immediate effect – or possibly any effect at all.

He ends his piece by saying “the most effective way of making progress is greater awareness among the electorate of how Parliament actually performs, or fails to perform. If the public understood more transparently how the corrupting influence of patronage actually works, how the power system turns everything to its own advantage, and how the genuine objectives of democratic elections are so readily thwarted, a lot of these unedifying practices would have to be curbed.”

Considering Cameron’s attitude to the will of the people so far, this seems unlikely.

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Tag Archives: Royal Mail

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