Hiding From The Truth
- Posted on the 5th May 2009
- 1 Comment
Today brings yet more coverage of the ongoing struggle between Labour Party rebels and the Government over the partial privatisation of Royal Mail. Unsurprisingly most articles do not bring a single mention of the role of the European Union.
It never ceases to amaze me how newspapers and our media manage to ignore the elephant in the room on this issue which is, of course, EU regulatory and legislative influence.
Why, they wonder out loud in their inverted columns, are Gordon Brown and the Government so determined to privatise Royal Mail and risk unpopularity from their voters and backbench MPs? Many times has this important question been asked, but so very rarely has the real answer been revealed by our mainstream press.
As I had previously discussed here, here and here, the European Union’s Postal Service Directives are responsible for this latest bout of angst over privatisation. Many journalists and MPs know about these laws, but, because it is not part of their official narrative, they are publicly ignored, as if they did not even exist.
Desperately they struggle on, twisting and turning over the same old ground in a bitter attempt to come up with any reason, any excuse, anything about the privatisation of Royal Mail by the Labour Government, except to mention the EU dimension.
Yet, the power and influence of the EU can only be ignored for so long. I realise that there are many on the Left who have for some time seen it as an entirely favourable proposition to abolish Britain because it does not conform to their political vision.
Britain has retained its monarchy and yet is democratic, it was traditional and yet able to modernise, was capitalist but had a social conscience, and had a class system but did not present a bar to talent. According to the theories of the Left, Britain should not have existed, and so, slowly but surely, they have sought to make absolutely sure that it did not.
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- Filed in European Union, New Labour, Royal Mail
Royal Mail Privatisation
- Posted on the 1st March 2009
According to BBC News, Lord Mandelson has said that the only way to ‘save’ the Post Office from unprofitability and its huge burden of pension debt is through partial privatisation.
Similarly, Gordon Brown said in a speech in Bristol yesterday that private investment in Royal Mail was imperative in being able to guarantee its £25bn pension fund and maintain a universal postal service.
The strength of feeling on this issue in the Labour party is clearly quite strong. I was in the Lords Gallery on Wednesday when the Labour peer Lord Clarke of Hampstead, who is a former postman, shouted ‘shame on you’ as Lord Mandelson brought the Bill to the House of Lords for a first reading. In the House of Commons well over one hundred Labour MPs have signed an early day motion criticising the Government’s plans to sell a stake in Royal Mail.
Furthermore, in opposition to Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson, Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, told BBC News that the privatisation plan was ‘baffling’ and just didn’t make any sense. He also said to Sky News:
I don’t want to see Mrs Thatcher’s ideas, Conservative ideas, being introduced by a Labour government. Let’s be clear: 25%, 30%, Peter Mandelson has talked about 49% owned by a foreign company.
That’s not what people in the Labour Party want, that’s not what people in the country want – they want to see a modern Royal Mail.
Yet, despite so much anger and bitter opposition from many of their key supporters, the Labour Government has ploughed on regardless with the privatisation of Royal Mail.
There has been much discussion in the media and in political circles about why Mr Brown and Lord Mandelson would risk the ire of the Unions and a backbench rebellion when the Labour party is in a weak position in the opinion polls. Unsurprisingly most of this speculation has been far wide of the mark.
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- Filed in European Union, New Labour, Royal Mail
Swiftly They Move
- Posted on the 21st December 2008
The business section of today’s Daily Mail remarks upon a sell-off of Royal Mail taking place as early as April of this coming year. The paper also briefly details a list of potential buyers including TNT, Deutsche Post and the US Federal Express.
This merely points out the true inevitability of the situation – that the future of Royal Mail is in ‘privatisation’. It does not matter what we think about this; whether we agree or disagree with ‘privatisation’, it is not up to us to decide any longer – and it has not been our decision for quite some time.
As I previously highlighted, the European Union Postal ServicesDirective 2008/6/EC, which amended the previous Postal ServiceDirective 97/67/EC has decreed that ‘privatisation’ will indeed occur. Furthermore, as Directive 2008/6/EC clearly states:
Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 31 December 2010 at the latest. They shall forthwith inform the Commission thereof.
Therefore the ‘privatisation’ of Royal Mail from its position as majority universal service provider must occur by 2011. In targeting April for a sell-off, our Labour administration is simply doing as it is being told by our EU masters in the Commission rather than following the advice of any policy groups or reports.
I should also point out that even if the Conservative party were against the ‘privatisation’ of Royal Mail (which they are not), then it wouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference. Our continued membership of the European Union confers upon us the necessity of obeying its legislation which is now part of our own law.
- Filed in European Union, Royal Mail, The Law
The Euromail Transition
- Posted on the 16th December 2008
The ever honest, truthful and impartial BBC tells us that our Government are backing a report by Richard Hooper which recommends the partial privatisation of Royal Mail and our postal service.
I suppose I could briefly highlight what may seem like an interesting contrast between the likely sale of a longstanding public service to a foreign postal company by our Government and the fact that Labour are still imagined by many to be against the privatisation of public industries – but then, what exactly would be the point?
We should know by now that Labour and the Left haven’t been interested in nationalisation and the ownership of industry for years. Labour’s supposed clause four moment in which Blair amended the Labour party’s constitution and its commitment to ‘secure … the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’ was entirely irrelevant.
Decades before that moment there had been a radical revolution in thinking on the Left, since which Leftists have become steadily more interested in bringing about cultural rather than political revolution in order to successfully pursue their social and political agenda. As such the Left and the Labour party haven’t seriously been committed to nationalisation since the early sixties.
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