What is this strike really about?
An EU directive requires full competition in postal services by 2012, so that the Royal Mail must deliver its competitors' letters as if they were its own First Class ones, yet for less than the price of First Class post. This necessitates cuts, both in postmen's pay and in Post Offices. The pay cuts have already led to strikes, of which there will be more. So, is anyone out there still saying that the EU is Socialist?
Meanwhile, that the "free" marketeers seriously proposed privatising something nationalised (to use the word anachronistically, I admit) by Charles II in 1660, and representing the most significant direct link between the monarchy and every household, business, organisation and institution in the land, indicates just how utterly unconservative the "free" market ideology really is.
Neoliberal economics, a total disregard for our heritage and institutions, and European federalism: all of a piece, of course.
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Tony Benn always made great play about the origins of the Royal Mail...
ReplyDeleteThe management say that the current strikes are unjustified as the leadership has signed off on their vision of modernisation - ignoring the fact that pressure is growing from below for tough action both with management and new labour.