Lost In The Post

Peter Mandelson wants to privatise the Post Office. Well, of course he does.

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 still saying that the EU is Socialist?

Meanwhile, that the "free" marketeers would seriously propose 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.

Just as we need someone for the Commonwealth to balance the one for the EU and the US, and just as we need someone for "The Regions" (for want of a better term - and I mean "The Regions" of England, Scotland and Wales alike) to balance the ones for the Golden Triangle (London and the South East, the Central Belt of Scotland, and South Wales), so we need someone for Workers, Consumers and the Communities, to balance the one for Business.

No chance of that from any of the three New Labour parties, though.