Earlier this week Mario Dunn of Save Our Royal Mail wrote a post claiming that privatisation of the postal service could see the price of a stamp rise to £1. In the interests of debate we’ve allowed Royal Mail totest
Collectively, the changes to employment law amount to the biggest assault on workers’ rights ever. They very significantly weaken worker bargaining power, and will increase job insecurity for millions. And like so many of the coalition government’s policies they impact particularly on the most vulnerable.
The return of the Conservatives to power in Britain in 2010 has reminded us of just how negative so much of Thatcher’s legacy has been, as they attack public services and the living standards of ordinary people. Thatcher was a disaster for British society, culture and morals. Yet since her intervention of April 1993 into the debate over the former Yugoslavia nobody can justifiably assume simply that ‘left-wing is good; right-wing is bad’. The reality is more complicated.
Yesterday Paris Brown, the country’s first Youth Crime Commissioner, resigned from her post thanks to the Mail’s digging up of ill-advised tweets she posted several years ago. A sad, but perhaps inevitable end to what was the opportunity of a lifetime for the young teenager from Kent.
When visiting a factory in Wallsend in 1985, Margaret Thatcher famously turned on a reporter who challenged her over her impact on the region (with unemployment standing at 20 per cent at that time). She replied that the correct response was to highlight success stories “not always standing there as moaning Minnies”.
It is highly likely that the government will begin the privatisation of Royal Mail later this year.
Along with a sell off comes the real threat of stamp prices hitting £1. Price regulation on most stamps was scrapped to boost its attractiveness to investors. It is also quite possible that Royal Mail’s VAT exemption will become unlawful. Add VAT to just one price increase similar to the last one and the first class stamp would hit 94p.
Ah, the Daily Mail. One of Britain’s most popular and well read newspapers which in the past has seen fit to victimise those on benefits, transsexuals, homosexuals, asylum seekers, migrants and many more, now finds itself spitting venom at someone who isn’t even legally an adult.
We know the drill now. A eurozone member finds itself in dire financial straits. A cabal of finance ministers, European officials, domestic technocrats and global financiers pushes the stricken national government towards severe public spending cuts and tax rises. The social unrest caused by these policies bleeds into some form of populism, be it left-orientated (Syriza in Greece; 15M in Spain), right-orientated (Golden Dawn in Greece) or somewhere in the fuzzy middle (Beppe Grillo in Italy).
This policy will only work in the land where the Magic Job Tree grows alongside the Magic Money Tree that ensures all such jobs are well paid. And that only exists in the head of some policy wonks in Tory think tanks.
Since the Eastleigh by-election immigration has consistently been in the news, with all three parties making significant policy interventions.
Each party seems to be trying to outdo each other with rhetoric on how they’re going to crack down on migrants abusing public services, how immigration is out of control and how they don’t believe the official estimates and forecasts.
