Shapps

Intrigued by a piece about the company which was the Royal Mail (reference 1), in today's (Thursday's) Financial Times.

On the one hand, you have a business which is struggling to survive the decline of the traditional letter business (in the face of email) and the rise of the parcel couriers. With both changes looking to be here to stay. With both changes taking a good bite out of the business.

On the other, you have the unions fighting to preserve jobs which were not particularly well paid, but which were comfortable, safe and generously pensioned - with postmen once counting as civil servants with annual increments, final salary pensions and lump sums. Comfort which used, fifty years ago anyway, run to good quality canteens serving exotica like baked sheep's hearts in the middle of the night. This being a memory from the Christmas post at a big sorting office near St Paul's. Jobs which probably include all kinds of ancient traditions which should probably be pruned away. From where I associate to the print workers who, shortly before they went down, insisted on replacing the retiring occupants of empty jobs.

The impression given is that something is going to have to give or this business will go down. Could it take its pension fund with it?

Against this background, it seems odd that the government refuses to relax the requirement on Royal Mail to deliver letters on six days a week. Somebody called Grant Shapps seems to want it both ways: he refuses to intervene in the affairs of a private company but he reserves the right to make the rules.

And just to keep my on my toes, the Royal Mail brand appears to be owned by International Distribution Services PLC, a company whose shares have been worth 600p, have had a fairly chequered history since privatisation in 2013 at 330p and are now worth something over 200p. For the moment at least, plenty of profits and dividends are holding up. Confused of Epsom.

PS 1: the snap above being of a postbox near us during the recent cold snap. Perhaps the best we will do in the way of snow this year?

PS 2: knit and natter is all very well, but I think these woolly creations should all be cleared away from time to time, perhaps every 1st of January. Fun for a while, but then they should be retired.

References

Reference 1: Royal Mail staff warned company in ‘fight for its life’ as more strikes loom: Letter from chief executive says attempts to seek help from government and regulator have failed - Oliver Telling, Financial Times - 2022.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps. A chap with a curious history. At least he went to neither Eton nor Oxford.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail.