It blows my mind how many public services have been privatized in the UK. It just feels like they're selling off the shoes they're standing in. When their railways got privatized, the service didn't improve, the price just ballooned.
Even in the states, the USPS has resisted privatization this far. For the love of god I hope it continues to. Protect our boys n girls in blue and tell your congressman you want postal banking.
Yup. The Post Office, the railways, the water system, for heavens' sake!
The tories, as a matter of religious faith, see privatised => efficient, whilst being unclear on the difference between 'efficient at creating shareholder value' and 'efficient at serving the public good'. The political mood music, over the last few decades, has meant that the Labour party has repeatedly found itself obliged to say positive things about privatisation, as part of the process of Being Sensible About The Economy (there is a much longer alternative version of this comment!).
The US -- the world temple of capitalism -- seems to be oddly principled (viewed from outside) about keeping certain things such as the postal service, or USGS, as part of the service to the public realm.
The one service probably immune from privatisation is the Health Service. It's only the most frothing-at-the-mouth right-wingers, the provocateurs just one step away from a rabies injection, who'd even admit out loud to a desire to do that. A politician talking about privatising the NHS would I think be pretty much equivalent to a US libertarian politician talking about privatising the armed forces.
(there's a longer version of that comment, as well...)
The Post Office (shops, services, government forms, etc.) is still fully government-owned. It's the Royal Mail (delivery) that was privatised. They used to be the same company but split in two before Royal Mail was privatised.
Thank you! – yes, it's a private company, fully owned by the Government. I think I sort-of knew that, but it hadn't properly registered; I may indeed have been confusing it with Royal Mail.
It means that the PO is quite closely analogous to the Ordnance Survey, in organisational terms. It's maybe describable as a quasi-privatisation, in that the company is run on a fully commercial basis, with correspondingly narrow goals in principle, but with the profits (or, in the case of the PO, the losses) going to the Exchequer, and the relevant minister (presumably) having some say about the appointment of board members.
It's organisationally tidy, I suppose, and manages to fit in with the long-standing 'private=efficient' doctrine. It still feels vaguely off, to me; not quite cricket.
Even in the states, the USPS has resisted privatization this far. For the love of god I hope it continues to. Protect our boys n girls in blue and tell your congressman you want postal banking.