Keep your eyes on the recently announced (fire) sale of Royal Mail for asset stripping in action. In sale expected to generate £2.5bn it has been estimated that three of RM's London sites alone could generate £1.5bn, these sites have already been earmarked as 'surplus'. Then factor in all the other town and city centre sorting offices that will be closed and sold off - all prime commercial/residential real estate.

I saw similar at first hand when the National Freight Consortium was sold off. Included in the sales was National Carriers. NC was what used to be British Rail Parcels and all depots were adjacent to railway stations, including Kins Cross. Now look around and try to find a NFC company operating in the Uk: Lynx, Exel Logistics and Tankfreight have all been taken over. I'm a member of what was the NFC Pension Fund, now DHL and my pension entitlement is a fraction of what it once was.

That's privatisation in action

I feel your pain - but not enough feel it isn't in the interest of the country - there is competition and most consumers are happy with shopping at a supermarket.

I terms of growth inflation will take care of that - if your margin is 5% on 1 billion sales so costs are 952m profit is 47.6m if your costs rise by 5% to 1bn and you maintain the same margin your sales grow to 1.050bn profits grow from 47.6m to 50m for maintaining the status quo. Food is a global market supermarkets are affected by macro-economics.

Agree re sustainability - we are many centuries away from the populus not having sufficient food to survive - developments like GM crops will help in this - we waste so much food that it is embarassing.

Your last point is interesting and valid in a free market the market is there for all participants no one is forced down any particular route. You can get all your shopping needs without using a supermarket.

Maybe we should close all the borders to imported goods and be self sufficient - do we really need trifola d'Alba?

Good for Sainsbury's.
Remember we are talking about the old view about how, in that wonderful tomorrow, we would all have an easier life due to automation and looking at why that hasn't happened.
Do any workers sacked by automation gain?
Do the workers remaining at the company gain by automation?
I've already suggested that the gain goes to shareholders rather than those employed, you are saying that the gain goes in expanding the company, who gains from that? The shareholders.


We dealt with this earlier and no, I don't.
As long as share value either goes up or not too far down, the fund manager will not demur.
Do I think that if, say, a massive plan that would significantly reduce share value were to be put forward they would be sanguine about it, no I don't, they be ditching shares all over the place and the short-termers (again) would be on it like a flock of vultures.
None of which changes the fact that short-termers are creaming off value, possibly not from Sainsbury's shares at the moment but from shares in companies whose performance affects their share value.
It also doesn't change the fact that short-termers' deals affect the share price or that short-termers profit without putting any benefit into the economy.


Mostly by a bigger market, in a successful economy most producers are also consumers.
But we still have 2.5m unemployed which suggests to me that, possibly, that the "haves" have too much and don't spend enough of it.

Let me ask you (genuine question) ... Given that unemployment went up and up in the 1980's and has wavered up and down since but has never come back to the early 1970's level, where do [uyou[/u think the benefit of automation went?

Yup, more's the pity.
There is a general view that walking around a vast hangar of a supermarket is way more convenient than visiting a row of shops but really I suspect it mainly just comes down to the fact that parking is easier.

The only supermarkets that approach the escape velocity required to exit my sphere of intolerance are Booth's.
They make a point of sourcing as much as possible from Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Not cheap though.

So we should expect the Tory front bench to be outraged by the land grab - the State forcibly taking land off the taxpayer and giving it to a group of investors?

Will the front bench of the Tory party be outraged by the "Stalinist land grab" (complusory purchase) from private business (farmer) by our Tory controlled local authority in order to build an unwanted academy school?

Will they Tory front bench be outraged by the proposed "Stalinist land grabs" from many private individuals and businesses to build HS2 a project, a project that has the support of not one person (and taxpayer) that I have actually met?

Mind you they are outraged by talk of "Red Ed" compulsorily purchasing builders land to build on. Is that because the electorate actually want / need more housing?

The insanity and hypocrisy of the Britain that the Daily Mail loves is truly staggering.

Love them, great staff paid a decent wage, quality produce and I wouldn't call them expensive, complete example of you get what you pay for.

Always drop in the Windemere branch when I'm up in Ambleside.

Having said that they're nowhere near as good as my local community owned co-op greengrocers/bakery and farm shop.

How many place lament the state of your Rugby League team and give you a cuddle when they've just won the league?

Given all these buildings will be surplus to operational requirements when the sale goes through does that suggest that the new owners will streamline the business, run it more efficiently/effectively? Or is the level of through put suddenly going to reduce? It would seem the latter to be unlikely which would suggest the current business is carrying unnecessary costs which for whatever reason it cannot offload.

Given the demand for housing in London, the fact that RM have closed other big depots it would seem a no brainer to dispose of these depots in London. That is if as you say they are surplus to need a win-win for everyone?

Not quite.

If it were the case that any surplus city centre properties could only be sold with the proviso (as per the Olympic Park apartment buildings) that a sizeable chunk, preferably a majority, of the properties would be sold only to first time buyers or rent capped to "affordable" levels (again as per the Olympic Park) then the disposal of public assets could be seen to be benefiting the public good, I won't be holding my breath for any such planning restrictions to be placed though especially on the London sites.

A win-win for everyone apart from the taxpayer (you know, the people who currently own Royal Mail)

You're typical of classic tory thinking: "know the price of everything and the value of nothing". It really is difficult to debate with an idiot whose only response is to cut and paste neoliberal soundbites

Who is going to do the construction on these sites - you have been crying out for Keynesian economics - building on this scale will need a lot of people surely even you would see a small plus in that. Or would you rather they stay empty and in public ownership? The problem is it will impossible for the current regime to downsize due to pressure from unions - how do you unlock the value in its current guise?

I like you find it difficult debating with someone with such entrenched ideology that you struggle to rationalise whatsoever?

So you'd quite happily flog off a public service, at a vastly undervalued sum and offer an opportunity for a thousand builders to get some work as mitigation?

Strange



And what's proposed is a million miles from Keynesian economics

Using the well know politicians back-of-a-fag-packet "blue sky" thinking here is a suggestion, bearing in mind that we are currently the owners of such properties (assuming they aren't privately leased) ...

You identify those city centre properties that are going to be surplus to requirements when the eventual purchaser gets his bargain - in our own city there may not be one as the Royal Mail moved out to Stourton some years ago and either own or lease a huge modern facility there now but there are many local sorting offices that may be suitable for shifting on the closest to me being already in an area of social housing so ideal for my little experiment.

Having identified all of these properties you set a valuation on the site pitched at a level "to sell" which isn't necessarily the same price that an ambitious property agent would set, the price would be fixed and written into the sale of business contract with a condition of sale that the land could only be used for residential development with at least 50% social rent use - not as far fetched as it seems (see Olympic Park legacy), at the same time you draw up a list of preferred purchasers consisting of companies with a proven track record of developing and then managing such mixed use social and private estates (see again Olympic Park), again non of this is unknown to developers and legal people, most local authority building tender documents used to have a list of nominated sub-contractors beyond which the main contractor could not use.

If a government were genuinely interested in solving the shortfall of suitable low cost housing for a whole generation of its citizens they could even make some investment themselves into those housing associations of charitable status who may be suitable for developing such schemes - lets not forget that some of these schemes would be quite localised and small scale, there is no reason why you could not manage the sales on an individual site basis.

Simples.

Now lets see which of those "interested" purchasers are genuinely interested in the distribution of residential mail or were simply sharks circling in the water looking for a quick pension fund top up.

Congratulations, I haven't seen anyone completely miss what Keynesian economics was about so spectacularly.

What is its true value - its true value is what someone will pay for it - how much do you genuinely feel its worth, do you think the business has a long term profitable future? I would suggest not, there are two main strands: parcels the bulk of the business which is currently profitable but in a very competitive market where margins are dropping. Mail where margins are non-existent and if you push the prices higher you will force current participants into other methods of communication. Also this sector competes on technology - whoever buys this will need to inject huge amounts of capital to get the kit up to the same spec as its competitors. All you see is asset stripping - which is where your lefty dogma clouds your reasoning.

Maynard-Keynes suggested at the bottom of the cycle money should be borrowed to undertake large capital projects such as home and road building.

A couple of points...

1. There are no competitors in the mail delivery sector, there is no need to play catch up with competitors - the competitors currently use Royal Mail to make the point of delivery precisely because they have no such facility - that is the attraction to them and whoever takes over that enterprise will have a stranglehold on anyone else who wants to get into it.

2. The unique selling point in the parcels sector is the Post Office Counters network which may or may not be part of the sell-off but is still an integral part of the business. As someone who dispatches quite a few individual parcels each year on a non-regular basis I have yet to find a courier service that offers me collection on demand (they just don't turn up) or a point of delivery for me to attend that is convenient and not across the other side of the city - and that is not to mention the customer loyalty in that brand.

As has been said before, you know the cost of everything but the value of nowt.

Goldman Sachs and UBS advised the government on the price to fix the shares (for a fee of £21+ millions) the same Goldman Sachs who audited Greece's books before they were allowed into the EU, not to mention other dodgy deals they've been involved with.

It is epected that shares will be masively oversubsribed, so the retail customers (the likes of you and me) will get far fewer shares than they apply for. Hedge funds and Institutional investors have upped the scope of their applications, with many applying for hundreds of millions of shares, knowing that they will only get a fraction. Some stockbrokers are working all weekend and remaining open until midnight Tuesday to process applications.

It is anticipated that once allocated, shares will then be trading at 30% above initial price within 24 hours but the retail customers will have to wait a further week before they can trade.

The whole thing is a stitch-up to flog off, on the cheap, to the benefit of a select few

Even you don't get it - the competition isn't other postal firms - it is how you deliver the message, if you increase postal costs, direct mail - a huge chunk of the revenue - will be forced to use other less costly channels like e-mail or digital platforms. That is before you talk about personal letters, volumes of which have been dropping over many years. Do you think volumes will increase or decrease when the cost gets near the £1 a letter?

Amazing that given point two any other courier can survive let alone prosper - how is that possible?

1. Personal post must be a fraction of the mail delivered these days but despite concerted attempts by all businesses who deal direct with the public there is still a huge majority who insist on receiving postal bills, statements and the rest and always will be, and whilst the likes of me might be shocked when I have to buy a second class stamp and find its at least 20p more than I thought it was going to be (last Monday), the businesses that are legally obliged to send postal correspondence have no choice but to pay the discounted franked bulk mail rate - most mail received in households is from businesses.

2. Business to business and business to home as you well know, the sector where Royal Mail has a massive monopoly at the moment is in personal parcel post, either the boom in eBay transactions or returns to other couriers from internet shopping - strange how the likes of Yodel can get a courier van to your door within 24 hours but if its the wrong size or colour and you need to return it they then have to pay the Post office Counters to accept their returns.

Initially the price will rise but it will settle back within a month to somewhere close to the offer level - let's see where the share price is in a year when the true reality of running this business - outside of state ownership final hits home and the hedge funds cannot justify the value of their holding.

Indeed, just when your average punter can trade, after the city have flogged off their shares and pocketed a short term gain.

Bugger me, have you got any idea how these things work?

The vast majority of the initial offer will have been resold within 24 hours. The institutional investors will probably play a longer game but the spivs of hedge funds will have gotten out and clear away without handing over a red cent.

Is this our brave new world?

Can't afford to pay NHS staff 1% extra but MP's get 10%?

There's only 650 odd MP's mate.

Aye, I did think about that, still seems a little bit unfair though