Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't Outlines Plans To Privatize Royal Mail
Ellie K writes "After 500 years, Britain announced plans to fully privatize Royal Mail today. Shares of stock (common equity) will be offered to the public 'in coming weeks', according to Reuters. 10% of shares will be given to current Royal Mail employees, Deal size is estimated at $US 3 to 4.7 billion. Goldman Sachs and UBS were chosen as lead advisers." That doesn't mean you'll be able to buy a piece tomorrow, though; as the BBC's report notes, "The plans have provoked strong opposition from unions. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is currently balloting members on strike action. Ballot papers are due to go out on 20 September to 125,000 Royal Mail workers. The earliest possible strike date would be 10 October. Plans to privatise the 250-year-old postal service have been on successive governments' agendas since the early 1990s."
We have a thriving competitive market in telecoms? Oh, Sir, you crack me up. We have VIrgin Media, Sky and BT, and almost all your "competitors" are actually using re-sold BT services which only exist thanks to a stringent framework of regulation which nevertheless still operates in BT's favour ("regulatory capture"). Fuck, BT are even required to artificially separate the operations of their divisions - BT Openreach, BT Wholesale, and BT retail, so it isn't so obvious how they take advantage of their position as a natural monopoly.
The US is certainly worse - because it's an order of magnitude more spread out than the UK, and its privatisation was even less regulated (so, for example, BT are required to provide a certain level of service, which in a lot of cases e.g. remote Scotland is provided through government sponsorship).
RM had already been broken up into such inefficiency (as above) that it was necessary to drive up prices to make it profitable again. Even the NHS suffers this problem: all your greatly indebted Trusts were involved in New Labour's horrible public-private partnerships. The problem isn't the lack of private sector involvement: it's the existence of subcontracting to the private sector, where none before existed.
The belief that profit produces a better service per se is ideological. It sometimes does - e.g. when there is a free market - but not for essential services, especially not when they form natural monopolies.