Reply to: Royal Mail privatisation approved

[CheeseSlice]

10% is stuff which, if we had the inclination, could be downloaded from t'interweb (bills, magazine subscriptions)

Dont count on it. The website that I 'should' be able to view my credit card bill from has been broken for the past 5 days that I've tried using it. (happens to be the Post Office credit card website )

[shaunbhoy]

This scale could only have been 'invented' in Glasgow. A methodical process of inflicting pain.

Step one, pinch ear.
Step two, key into nail
Step three, nuckle into ribs
Step four, 5 minutes of the krankies.

Surely there are a few extra steps between three and four? Seems like quite a quantum jump going straight to the krankies. Maybe something along the lines of eyeballs being skewered, and livers being torn out might make it more of a gradual scale?

[OwlHoot]

Perfect opportunity from the previous thread concerning out of work families.

If you've been on benefits for a year, then you could job share sorting mail and packing bags. Not sure everything has to be privately financed when there are so many out of work.

Most of it is done with machines these days - I think they send the mail to a few large sorting areas, and run it through machines which read postcodes with OCR, and flash up an image of the address to people sitting at terminals to tap in or confirm the postcode in cases of doubt.

In fact, a great way to extend automation even further would be to have "stamps" that were long strips where successive letters and numbers could be circled on successive lines, e.g. for SW2 ...

A B C .. (S) T U V W ..
A B C .. S T U V (W) ..
:::

and simply destroy any mail items where the postcode could not be read, so people would soon get the hang of it

[minestrone]

In England we just put the Alcohol by Volume on the bottles

This scale could only have been 'invented' in Glasgow. A methodical process of inflicting pain.

Step one, pinch ear.
Step two, key into nail
Step three, nuckle into ribs
Step four, 5 minutes of the krankies.

[ThomasSoerensen]

<bad taste money grabbing contractor mode>
They'll need a big SAP HR system if they go the same way as NL, and just by coincidence I know a bit about that stuff.

Great news for contractors!
</bad taste money grabbing contractor mode>

They should also implement a tiny bit of security in that SAP system. I can do that.

do we have a team?

[doodab]

No. You don't understand.

Sorry, my powers of comprehension are limited to interpreting what you actually said and not all the bits you only thought about.

Companies such as the Royal Mail & other state owned industries should have a number of places available for 'Back to Work' or 'Benefits Job sharing'. These jobs are already subsidised by the fact you the person are already on benefits. After a while you struggle with confidence(or laziness) to get back into work. A number of these B2W roles would be part time & those who took them up should be paid a B2W 'bonus' and obviously travel & meal expenses (to a sensible level). Obviously if you're on benefits you still need to attend interviews.

As part of this overall initiative Back 2 Workers could also be provided training/skills in new areas(a sort of B2W apprenticeship) or put to use on cleaning streets, maintenance, gardening, picking up litter etc etc.

The trade off could come by reducing overtime costs for the likes of councils and state owned businesses and actually increase overall service by providing more resource (already paid for by benefits). You don't lose your benefit, you only get extra to it.

So what you are actually suggesting is that people on benefits should continue to get their benefits while also being paid some small additional amount (by whom exactly?) for working in menial jobs. It's not an awful idea but it relies on the assumption that the benefit to these organisations, if there is one, of having an extra person who works essentially for free outweighs any costs required in equipment, training, additional insurance and so on. I suspect that ultimately if they worked out cheaper these people would end up displacing existing temporary workers, and if they were more expensive it wouldn't work.

Of course there is also the problem that many of these functions such as street cleaning etc have been privatised or outsourced. You probably couldn't allow the companies that do this stuff to take advantage of such a scheme without falling foul of competition law or being accused of subsidising or somesuch.

[MayContainNuts]

The companies they end up working for aren't going to pay two full wages for two part time workers, so either the government would need to subsidise it or the person who's job got "shared" would lose half their income and need to get another job to make ends meet.

No. You don't understand.

Companies such as the Royal Mail & other state owned industries should have a number of places available for 'Back to Work' or 'Benefits Job sharing'. These jobs are already subsidised by the fact you the person are already on benefits. After a while you struggle with confidence(or laziness) to get back into work. A number of these B2W roles would be part time & those who took them up should be paid a B2W 'bonus' and obviously travel & meal expenses (to a sensible level). Obviously if you're on benefits you still need to attend interviews.

As part of this overall initiative Back 2 Workers could also be provided training/skills in new areas(a sort of B2W apprenticeship) or put to use on cleaning streets, maintenance, gardening, picking up litter etc etc.

The trade off could come by reducing overtime costs for the likes of councils and state owned businesses and actually increase overall service by providing more resource (already paid for by benefits). You don't lose your benefit, you only get extra to it.

[doodab]

Perfect opportunity from the previous thread concerning out of work families.

If you've been on benefits for a year, then you could job share sorting mail and packing bags. Not sure everything has to be privately financed when there are so many out of work.

The companies they end up working for aren't going to pay two full wages for two part time workers, so either the government would need to subsidise it or the person who's job got "shared" would lose half their income and need to get another job to make ends meet.

[doodab]

'Glasgow Coma Scale'

In England we just put the Alcohol by Volume on the bottles

[MayContainNuts]

Perfect opportunity from the previous thread concerning out of work families.

If you've been on benefits for a year, then you could job share sorting mail and packing bags. Not sure everything has to be privately financed when there are so many out of work.

[minestrone]

The sellers of ´Highland Spring´ won´t thank you for that. Just as the sellers of Ty-Nant wouldn't be very grateful if I told the population of Birmingham that their tapwater comes from Snowdonia and is probably the best drinking water on earth.

Sam Galbraith says it well in this hard hitting analysis, he may be Labour but he is neither New Labour, old Labour or Scottish Labour. I do not know why he is refered to as Mr when he is a very highly respected brain surgeon and I think (fairly sure) he might have termed the 'Glasgow Coma Scale' which is a test to see if a patient is really in a coma, a term used around the world now.

But in a blunt message to his former colleagues Mr Galbraith, who maintains that he favours public ownership where it is possible, asks: "Is the privatisation of Scottish Water inevitable? Despite our best efforts to prevent it the economics are not looking good."

Taking a swipe at the Executive, Mr Galbraith adds: "There is no good jumping up and down and mouthing the usual meaningless political slogans that pass for argument every time this subject is raised.

"Ignore the false prophets who talk in long-past dogmas and who hide from themselves, and us, the realities of present-day life. We are faced with a difficult decision, not now but in the foreseeable future."

Continuing with his hard-hitting analysis, which will infuriate his former colleagues, Mr Galbraith adds: "Scotland lives on its myths and one of these is that Scotland has the finest water in the world. Like all our myths it is rubbish.

"At the end of the last century the very best water in Scotland was worse than the poorest water in England. Privatised Thames water was purer than West of Scotland water. It may taste awful but by accepted objective standards it is better." He adds: "Part of the reason for this is that the water industry is in the public sector. There are no votes in building water-treatment plants and certainly none in sewage-treatment plants.

"It never gets the priority it is due from politicians and over the years we have failed to invest in and neglected our water and sewage. The EU has come to our rescue by setting standards for the purity of water and the handling of sewage and forcing us to comply.

His case was reinforced yesterday as the Executive announced that it was granting Scottish Water £800 million over four years for investment. Although the money is technically a loan, the sum is counted in the overall Scottish budget as spending

Privatise water - or Scotland will go broke - The Scotsman

[AtW]

Does it mean that the queues in Post Office will stop reminding me about queueing for bread in Soviet Russia?

[moorfield]

I'd be happy with a one day a week service, so long as the post actually arrived on that day and wasn't "diverted" by dodgy Mail staff
Signed: Disgruntled of London

40% of our post is junk mail / circulars that get binned anyway

20% is deliveries / parcels which we have to go and pick up because we are invariably out. The other 20% comes via courier / home delivery network etc.

10% is stuff which, if we had the inclination, could be downloaded from t'interweb (bills, magazine subscriptions)

Which leaves 10% that might be personal / important - wedding invites, birthday cards etc. but all these usually come with an accompanying text message or email before they arrive anyway.


The Royal Mail will cease to be within my lifetime I'm certain of that. And when it does some enterprising spark is going to buy up all the post boxes and sorting offices and turn it into the mother of all Plan B's.

[shaunbhoy]

There is also an important ideological point to make in opposing privatisation. We do not think that our services should be run as businesses to make profit – we think they should be run as services to meet the needs of the people who use them.

Agree somewhat with these sentiments. Some things should just NOT be run solely with profit in mind.
Selling off our Utilities to the Frogs was a disastrous idea that is coming back to haunt us.
As for the Post Office, I agree with Jack Dee. "If you think that the price of a stamp is too dear then here you are...here is your 41p back.............take your own fooking letter to Aberdeen!!"

[Mich the Tester]

I'd be happy with a one day a week service, so long as the post actually arrived on that day and wasn't "diverted" by dodgy Mail staff
Signed: Disgruntled of London

One of our local councillors has set up a petition for the appointment of a literate postman and has already got 2000 signatures; that's Dutch privatised post for you.