HearFromYourMP

Comments

• Posted by Galina Coldspring, 15:41, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  I THINK IF YOU CONCENTRATED ON ENSURING THE PARAMOUNT SAFETY ON THE STREETS OF HACKNEY AND PROVIDED DECENT LARGE ENOUGH HOMES FOR THOSE ON LOW INCOME THEN YOU WOULD BE BETTER SUPPORTED BY YOUR OWN PEOPLE. AS IT IS EVERYONE FEELS YOU DONT CARE ABOUT YOUR PEOPLE IN HACKNEY AND CERTAINLY MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN FORGOTTEN BY YOU AND THE GOVERNMENT DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT THIS PO ISSUE AS THEIRS IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT. THANK YOU

• Posted by Andrew Senior, 15:52, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  If we privatize the PO will the NHS be next? and after that Schools? then the army? What is wrong with government business in this country?

• Posted by Steve lane, 16:37, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Since this group of dishonourable thieves (MPs)stole our utilities (telecoms, Gas, Electric, Water) and our railways and sold them without our consent, we the public, have had to endure ever increasing prices/bills to the extent that the average wage does not even cover the cost of these basic things that we need to live. Our forefathers and Mothers paid with their toil and taxes to build these utilities and a group of crooks (Mps) took them away from us. Meanwhile, we still pay the taxes. Our taxes are higher than ever and practically everything we owned as a nation has been sold. We now have situations where nothing will be done to stop our water companies raising their bills by another 17% to (supposedly) pay for replacing Victorian drains that could have lasted another 100 years or threatening the poor with trickling their water supplies. The Gas/Electric/Telecoms/Railway companies are the same or worse. If the PO is privatised, it will no doubt line the pockets of those who can afford to buy shares (such as our thieving Mps) but for the rest of us we can be sure that buying a stamp will become a luxury. And of course there will be no-one including Z list TV personallity, Ms Abbott, who will do anything about it.

• Posted by Jonathan Hogg, 16:39, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  I think I must experience a different Royal Mail from you. The Post Offices I go to are chronically understaffed, and the few windows they manage to have open at peak times are operated by the surly, hassled, and often rude, remaining few. To pass the hours spent in queues, I am bombarded with advertising for financial services that would seem to be much better delivered by any number of high street banks.

  My post man, while cheerful enough, has a habit of delivering mail for every house in N16 with the same door number as me through my letterbox and doesn't usually manage to do that until late afternoon. The only way to get timely, reliable delivery anymore is to pay an outrageous surcharge for "special delivery", which also often doesn't manage to make it before the supposed guaranteed time - I guess they rely on the fact that senders can rarely be bothered fighting the byzantine system to get their money back.

  Parcels seem to only be deliverable at times when normal people with jobs are unable to receive them. Having failed to deliver the parcels, the post persons then seem to take them home or something as, for no reason I can fathom, we then need to wait two days to be able to collect them from the sorting office - thus ensuring that anything with the misfortune to be delivered on a Friday becomes uncollectable until the following week. My local sorting office is open for only a few hours on a Saturday and sometimes has a queue 20 to 30 people long.

  All of this service is delivered while apparently losing an enormous amount of money. I'm a supporter of public services - I really am - but honestly I'm willing to give anything a go in the case of the Royal Mail, as what we have now is clearly failing.

  As to the "but who will the old folk talk to?" argument: I have to say that I'm highly distressed to think that the best we can offer the elderly in terms of human interaction is a half-hour wait in a Post Office queue to buy a stamp.

• Posted by Romin Sutherland, 16:41, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  RE POST OFFICE PRIVATISATION

  If the post office is partially privatised this will lead to a further decline in their service provision which will therefore increase calls for and justify further privatisation.

  It would appear that all parties wish to allow the postal service to stay together while falling apart at the same time because they know it is very popular with the electorate (especially those that actually vote). If they partially privatise they can allow it to appear to fall apart all by itself without taking any responsibility for it.

  Personally it doesn't really bother me either way but I wish that the legislature would either bail it out completely and ensure that it has a viable future OR sell it off to the highest bidder and have rid of it.

  In all likelihood it is more likely to be allowed to self-destruct thus saving money and votes simultaneously and once again political expediency will win out over good old common sense.

• Posted by Vivienne limmer, 16:44, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Surely, with the amount of money recently handed over to bail the banks out and plans going forward to replace the trident nuclear programme at a cost of billions, without a public consultation, the government can afford to sort the Post Office out properly.

• Posted by John Knight-Barnard, 16:44, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  I wonder if you remember a member of parliament named Tony Benn - Postmaster General -1964-1966? He might have a comment to make on this subject, being far better informed than I am. I only know that since a number of nearby post offices have closed recently, people needing that service have found it very difficult to get to a post office that is still open. E-mail,the mobile phone, text messages, TV licencing are all things that the post office could have had control over. An opportunity lost!

• Posted by Simon Pennington, 18:18, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  keep the mail in public domain. up the 1st class to flat rate 50p (what can you get for 50p nowadays?) lose the ridiculous size/weight cats introduced a year or so back..who understands them? keep sub post offices

  increase tax especially on the rich...

  simple

• Posted by Miss Lucy Hawthorne, 18:22, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  This smacks of profit > people yet again.

• Posted by Thomas MacManus, 18:38, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Diane is correct - The private sector, with its profit-centric goals, should not be allowed to run the public service that is the Royal Mail, and particularly should not be allowed to run the Post Office. These are services vital for the cohesion of our communities. But there are bigger issues out there and this type of continuous debate over a relatively trivial issue only serves to sap political will. Let's look at the environment, look seriously at it. It is a huge challenge and we need to get innovative, and get organised, immediately. I'm afraid that we are going to be too late. We need to channel all our energy into environmental protection.

• Posted by Kathryn Johnson, 20:56, Fri 26 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Hang on a minute. So if private sector companies have debts they get bailed out by us, the tax payers, at a cost we haven't even begun to understand, without proper social controls to look after our interests and still without regulation to make sure they don't do the same again. But if a company that is already in public ownership has debts its to be sold to these private sector people who are oh so good at running whelk stalls.

  Nonsense. This is about allowing the private sector to fleece us yet again by handing over a public service with its public assets at probably yet another knock down price. We need to get rid of the World Trade Organisation and all those European Directives that are implementing the rules they have cooked up to line their own global sized pockets. One of the reasons the RM/PO is in trouble is because the private sector have been allowed to cream off the most profitable aspects of the service.

  No the Royal Mail/Post Office should not be privatised, part or otherwise. Nor should it be hollowed out with private contracts as the NHS has been. RM/PO should be used for all government and public bodies' mail.

  If the government had any sense at all they would be developing an economic and industrial strategy based on a strong public sector hub that they can use to stabilise and steer the economy. But then that would be putting citizens before business and profit - something no government has done in this country for a very long time indeed.

• Posted by Robert Pendar-Hughes, 11:07, Sat 27 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  This part privatisation is clearly the brain child of nitwits and beancounters, people who have little interest and less understanding of the value of the Post Office to our communites (or maybe that wasn't their remit?) and would surely lead to it's demise, in any useful form, nationwide.

  Instead of essentially killing off the PO how about replacing this corporate, asset stripping nonsense with some considered inward investment? Maybe try to help make it once more the envy of the world? If we can pump billions into the pockets of giggling fat-cat bankers then there can be no excuse for not finding a much, much smaller sum to rescue our Post Office.

  BTW: A coat of paint and a new carpet in Mount Pleasant Lane PO would be humble but desperately needed begining! I feel sorry for the poor counter staff in there.

• Posted by Jo Homan, 10:56, Sun 28 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  My local post office on Seven Sisters Road is fantastic and it's always good to see the familiar faces. I don't want them to be privatised as it would adversely affect the emphasis of the business. Instead, the government should should be supporting post offices any way they can. They are genuine community centres in ways that can't be measured in terms of cash.

• Posted by Kris, 15:08, Sun 28 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Privatisation is never the answer as it puts profits before people - selling off the Post Office may mean a loss of local high street branches (as if we havent lost enough already!). It may mean a loss of jobs for workers who have given years of loyal service, and loss of their pension rights too. I don't think privatisation of services like education, the NHS and other public services is the answer - we only have to look at the huge profits private enterprises make - british gas, british telecom the banks even. Keep our postal service public I say, and invest in people not profit!

• Posted by John Callon, 07:54, Mon 29 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  I'm not sure the solution is as simple as the "headlines" might suggest.

  The Post Office provides a social service as well as a commercial service. There might be an argument in favour of privatising the commercial aspect of it and providing a government subsidy for the social aspects. (I would include the pension fund in the latter.)

  The Royal Mail is a commercial operation and is run as such by its single shareholder. If the shareholder had introduced capital into the Royal Mail as it has done in the NHS then its modernisation would have been completed some time ago. However, there is no money left in the pot to do this now (don't tell Gordon Brown, though - let him remain in his fantasy world).

  What is not clear is whether this is being driven by EU legislation - perhaps you could enlighten us, Diane? (The weblink below suggests it could be.)

  What would be helpful is to have information on what has happened in other similar countries. For example, those most similar to the UK would include Ireland, Australia and NZ. While they may have different pension regimes, they have all suffered from the same change in business volumes and changes to banking. How have those countries managed the changed environment? How about a question to the appropriate democratically elected minister, Diane? (By the way this US website has some information on foreign postal services - not sure about its accuracy http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/06/23/privatize-the-post-office/

  I support the positive comments of the contributor above about the Post Office in Seven Sisters Road - if it refers to the Finsbury park branch. I also share the same frustration as another contributor about the serice from the Royal Mail - if they have less work than before, how come the service is MUCH worse than before?

• Posted by Jonathan Hogg, 10:34, Mon 29 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Regarding John Callon's mention of the postal services in other countries, I recently had the pleasure of experiencing the postal service in Australia while on holiday there. The post offices are bright, open affairs like modern shops. The staff man normal counters instead of having to be shouted at through plates of glass. And here's the great thing: the post boxes are big enough to put large envelopes in!

  I don't know what they do differently to us, but perhaps we could send someone out on a junket (sorry, I mean "fact finding mission") to find out.

• Posted by Kate Creedy, 19:48, Mon 29 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Such a shame that there were so many missed opportunities with the Post Office, as John Knight Barnard commented. I think they need to be the hub of the connections, both human and technical in small villages and are useful in a big city if they were flexible and linked into working people's hours, as well as the elderly, the unemployed and those on benefits. In the end, it is a false choice between the private and public sectors. Profit is no better than stagnation for public services. Allow people to have some initiative and creativity and they can surprise both the bureacratic hand of the state on the rudder of democracy and the unthinking ruthlessness of those intent on only profit!

• Posted by Robert Pendar-Hughes, 12:46, Tue 30 June 2009: (Is this post abusive?) #

  Further to Jonathan Hogg's & John Callon's mini thread re: foreign Post Services - my wife and I have traveled extensively in New Zealand, there like Australia the Post Office premises are clean bright and well appointed, the staff manning them are always friendly, helpful and engaging. I'm not sure about the financial structure that supports such wonderful postal infrastructure but it may be interesting to find out how the Kiwis can make that work so well.

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