the last post
If you’re not yet acquainted with Auden’s Night Mail then I can not urge you strongly enough to go youtube it asap. Bolstered by an evocative Benjamin Britten soundtrack it’ll take you back to the steam-driven 1950s when ‘crossing the border to bring the cheque and postal order’ really did matter and The Royal Mail was the lifeblood of both business and society. Ah, those were the days…
It would have been unimaginable back then that at some time in the none too distant future the price of one of those metaphorical penny blacks would be 60p – equivalent to 12 shillings, that’s twelve bright silver shilling pieces and yes, sadly, I do remember them. Yep, from the 30th of this month, the cost of a first-class stamp will rise 30% to 60p and a second-class one rises by even more, 40% to 50p. It may therefore come as a surprise that the Royal Mail Group has just posted an operating profit of over £67m for the six months between April and September 2011?
Now, obviously there’s going to be winners and losers within the group, but let’s not ignore the given increase in stamp prices has much to do with the coalition’s decision to privatise the loss-making letters & parcels’ division with all due haste. These acts, aiming for a potential flotation or sale date of late 2013, constitute the most ambitious privatisation since John Major sold the railways in the 1990s and Thatcher gave away all manner of utility and power companies a little earlier. To be successful however, that is to raise more for both seller and speculative investor, last year’s £41m deficit needs to be banished from the profit & loss memory and rises of 50% will go a long way to achieving this. A further one was achieved last month when the government took on the £9.5bn pension liability.
Snail mail is declining rapidly the world over and less than 10% of the daily post volume is social correspondence. In reality, the letter has virtually vanished as an instrument of meaningful and heartfelt communication and with the cost of twelve silver shillings can’t you just hear the final nails in the coffin being pounded in. Mind, if I was a cynical so-and-so I’d try and dress up the price hike as an innovative and extremely cunning birthday card tax levy from ol’ Georgie boy.
