The Campaign for Public Ownership strongly opposes the government’s plans to part-privatise Royal Mail, which were announced yesterday.
The idea that selling off part of the Royal Mail to foreign owned companies, such as the Dutch firm TNT, will improve our postal service, simply ‘beggars belief‘, to use the words of Jim McGovern MP, who has resigned from the government on this issue.
The current problems at Royal Mail are to do with the government not investing enough in the service over the years; instead of spending the money on our postal service, they have preferred to spend money on unnecessary wars and other costly projects, such as the Millenium Dome.
The idea that privatisation will improve matters is naive to say the least: has privatisation improved Britain’s railways- or brought lower prices and better service to gas, electricity and water consumers? The reality is that the opposite has occurred and if we do privatise Royal Mail we will get a worse, not better service- with cutbacks in deliveries and hiked prices.
Every country in Europe that has been foolish enough to privatise parts of its postal service has experienced this.
It’s time to call an end to the Great Privatisation Rip-Off and for all concerned citizens to fight to keep the Royal Mail in full public ownership.
