Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
My utter confusion. Part-privatisation was shelved due to protests from the unions and the political impact of such not because of Labour's financial acumen?
What does this prove about Labour's economic policies? Again even the story itself mentions the results as being good inspite of the economic climate, nothing at all to do with any political policy or government investment, it mentions it as relating to efficiency and modernisation?
Is your plan to post that any company that shows any kind of reasonable financial results, even when the stories discussing the results specifically mention these being due to things like cost cutting, process improvements, etc, are due to Labour's economic policies?
If that is the plan you really have no faith in the private sector at all, you old socialist you  |
The thing is, the fact that there is money in the system which can be earned by these companies to produce increased profits during a World recession is due entirely to money being pumped into the system by the Government and the BOE. The media slammed GB for borrowing but you only have to look to America to see what happened in areas where the local steel works closed down or in parts of Detroit as the motor industry went into recession, whole areas are now completely empty of people with property falling down, we haven't suffered anything like that.
As far as Royal Mail goes, time was when each day I used to go to the post box with a carrier bag full of floppy disks containing applications for customers, many a time I had to wait for the postman emptying the box as it was already overflowing with mail when I got there, now on the rare occasion that I post a letter I hear it drop to the bottom of the box, obviously RM had to make changes, times change for all of us and we all have to expect that things cannot carry on as before, but hey, I find change exciting although it appears most people are afraid of change which I feel is quite sad.
I remember before privatisation of the utility companies when utility bills were very modest, I think privatisation was just a rip-off.
---------- Post added at 20:36 ---------- Previous post was at 20:33 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
It'd be nice if you could enlighten us as to the other examples you allude to please. With all these 'successes' under his belt I'm kind of wondering why Brown's not still PM or even leader of New Labour...   |
I can only speak for myself and the area I live in, under Thatcher we got bugger all in the way of government money as the Tory's flooded London and the South East with the stuff, under Labour you can see the difference as money from the Government and Europe has been spent here to help a deprived area become less deprived, all we want is our fair share after all we pay tax the same as everyone else and although a house may cost more in London and the South East a loaf of bread costs us just the same.
It's simple really, people swallow everything the media throws at them and the media wanted a change, for some reason best known to themselves they wanted the Tory's in power which is why they promoted the Lib-Dem's hoping that floating Labour voters would be more likely to vote for them than to vote Tory, now we see them sniping the Lib-Dem's at every opportunity presumably hoping to derail the coalition and give the Tory's another chance to get an overall majority sooner rather than later.
---------- Post added at 20:40 ---------- Previous post was at 20:36 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by foreverwar
Slowcoach, you do realise the investment was a £1.2 billion commercial loan, that the Post Office have to pay back?
Also, you forgot to mention the 2500 Post Offices closed in the last three years of the New Labour Government. |
I would assume that the commercial loan was more political than anything else to avoid too much noise coming from it's competitors.
Post Offices and Sub Post Offices need to get into the 21st century, most I have been in do not try very hard to earn extra revenue, they all tend to have a rack of tiny birthday cards costing many times more than you pay elsewhere, the price they charge for a jiffy bag or a cardboard box is just extortion and as a result the only people to buy anything are the totally stupid or totally desperate. The main thing that people need a Post Office for round here is to draw their benefits, the Post Office has the opportunity to have first crack selling them something but they stock nothing that those people need, a really big missed opportunity.
By the way, our Sub post Office was closed which was probably a good thing, on benefit day he would have his side of the counter covered with a multitude of scratch cards, handing the benefit cash out with one hand and taking it back with the other, I only ever saw one person win, he won a whole Pound which he promptly used to buy yet another losing card.