How to save Royal Mail in two easy lessons

By George Tyndale on Dec 18, 08 10:30 AM

Merry Christmas!

That's not just a sincerely meant greeting. It also happens to be a prime example of why the Royal Mail is in such deep trouble.

We just don't need the postman like we used to.

And not just because being able to send electronic messages means we posted five million less letters last year.

Nobody who wants to transmit information that is either important or urgent would even dream of putting it in the post.

But, apparently, the Trade Secretary Lord Mandelson does not understand this.

Nor does the man asked by the Government to look into the difficulties facing the Royal Mail, Richard Hooper.

His report, just published, seems to think that it is essential that we all get a visit from the postman six days a week.

And it is in a bid to maintain that service that he has suggested a huge slice of the Royal Mail should be sold off to the private sector, which would almost certainly be a foreign company.

To make that feasible he has also suggested that the organisation's massive pensions deficit, which will soon amount to £7 billion, should be shuffled off onto the taxpayer.

Lord Mandelson loves the idea.

So in other words, as the Communications Workers Union has so accurately pointed out, we are faced with a plan in which the Royal Mail's debts will be nationalised and its ability to make money will be privatised.

Yet there's clearly another way forward.

Firstly, abandon the idea that every house in the nations needs a visit from the postie every day (after all, in many cases he will be delivering nothing more urgent than an unwanted supermarket flyer).

Secondly, charge a proper price for a stamp.

The current 36p for a first class delivery is well below the charge made by most postal services across the rest of Europe. It also means that every stamped letter it delivers costs the Royal Mail 6p.

The simple fact is that if a private company does get its hands on the organisation then the charges will go up anyway.

And I, for one, would much rather pay a few extra pence to a fully British Royal Mail than see my cash being siphoned off into the bank account of some Dutch, German or Spanish operator.

In any case it was Midlander Rowland Hill, born in Kidderminster and educated in Birmingham, who invented the modern postal service when he came up with the lickable Penny Black.

If it takes the 50p Black to keep the service he invented British, I reckon it would be worth every penny.