Second Class Post

On my drive home from work a few times recently, I became involved in a Mexican stand-off with a large TNT delivery truck in the narrow country lanes around the village of Bodle Street Green. With barely enough room for two cars to pass each other, this nine ton truck caused the closest you could ever get to gridlock on the road from Rushlake Green. Cursing modern satellite navigation technology for sending inappropriate vehicles along the most direct route, I thought no more about it until a later evening when I saw the TNT truck parked up at the top of Sandhill Lane. As I passed, I saw that the driver was emptying the Royal Mail post box and carrying out the last collection of the day.

Since Royal Mail was privatised on the cheap in 2013, by former Labour councillor and now coalition Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, Vince Cable, most of us will not have noticed too much change - except that the profit made by Royal Mail does not now benefit us as taxpayers but benefits anonymous shareholders instead (when I say “benefit”, this is a moot point: it was announced in November that profits have fallen 21% in the last six months).

What I was seeing on my journey home was one of the less visible signs of privatisation: parts of the service being sub-contracted out. But we will probably all be seeing more visible signs – or not – soon, as Royal Mail has warned that daily postal deliveries may not be sustainable in the face of competition from other private companies. Curiously, the private company Royal Mail says it is most threatened by is Whistl (sic), the mono-vowelled re-branding of TNT Post UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of PostNL, operators of the Dutch postal service. TNT has long been a friend of the privatisers and most famously drove their trucks through the Wapping picket lines to distribute Murdoch’s newspapers during the 1986 strike.

I am sure there is a perfectly good reason why Royal Mail’s biggest competitors were carrying out postal collections from rural post boxes on its behalf, but it seems a little strange to me. However, this is not the strangest thing about it: I was used to seeing postmen in their red-liveried Royal Mail vans, carrying out the last collection of the day from a string of post boxes attached to telegraph poles, embedded in hedgerows or, in one case, part of a garden wall – a very British image. And what strikes me as odd is that the forces of conservatism, the very people I would expect to uphold this idyllic scene, are prepared to forego it in pursuit of profit. However, this is all irrelevant now: despite the government’s assurances that privatisation would not affect the service, it is becoming distinctly second class. Late afternoon collections from post boxes in my area have ended; if you want to catch the last post, you have got to get down to the post office.

Six of the Worst

The charge sheet against Thatcher is endless but here are the worst of her crimes.

Right To Buy – the current government is desperate to reduce the huge cost of housing benefit. They seek to blame this on workshy layabouts dozing in bed and expecting the state to pay their rent. The truth is that it is so high because the working poor cannot afford private sector rents; and they are renting in the private sector because the social housing stock can only support the most vulnerable; and the social housing stock is so low because it was sold off under Thatcher’s Right to Buy. Just like the staff at the Ritz who found her body, we are all mopping up after Thatcher.

Privatisation – the fact that your water and electricity is supplied to you by some dodgy French company is down to Thatcher flogging off the utilities companies. And every year when your electricity goes up disproportionately and you get a hosepipe ban, it’s because the shareholders are lining their pockets with the profits instead of investing in the infrastructure.

Falklands war – Thatcher was hugely unpopular in 1982 and would have certainly lost the next election. The Argentine invasion of the Falklands provided a great opportunity for her to position herself as a popular vote-winning Boudicca figure. All she had to do was send the boys down to the south Atlantic to duff up an inferior opponent. It all went to plan until HMS Sheffield got hit by an exocet missile. 255 British soldiers died in the conflict and 300 (and rising) veterans subsequently committed suicide (yes, that’s true). Blood on her hands – still.

Miners' strike – Thatcher turned one group of public sector workers (the police) against another group of public sector workers (the miners). She mobilised the police as her own political militia to break a strike, destroy communities and divide a nation. She started today’s demonisation of the public sector by calling the miners “the enemy within”.

Greed - Some people of my acquaintance are mourning Thatcher. They bought their council house at a huge discount, and flogged it for a massive profit as soon as they could; they bought shares in every utility flotation so they could make a quick profit; they kept a small amount of money in every building society so they would qualify for the 200 quid bung when it floated to become a bank. They were not alone; these were the sort of people Thatcher appealed to - selfish and without morality.

Finally - Euripides said, “judge a man by the company he keeps”. Thatcher called Nelson Mandela a terrorist but regularly took tea with Chilean fascist dictator, General Pinochet.