you dont know what your talking about,the goverment of the day took a pension holiday for thirteen years they paid nothing into the fund,although we the posties paid money each week money i worked hard for wilst bringing up a family,wher did that money go,also before the gov took away the monopoly royal mail put millions of profits into goverment coffers,new technology is having an effect yes but if royal management was any good we would be at the forfront leading the way bt no they have fiddled whilst rome burned,but they still manage to award themselfs millions of pounds in bonus payments..for failure something surely wrong about that.
thanks regards
john postman edinburgh
ps i love my job and am proud to work for royal mail

"In reality the public are no longer interested in the postal service."

On this point, I beg to differ.

Sure, it might not be at the forefront of people's minds on a daily basis, but follow this link, and you'll find research comparing physical post to email.

http://inspiredeconomist.com/2009/09/20/print-vs-electronic-media-has-anyone-asked-customers-what-they-prefer/

"50% of consumers indicated that they still prefer to receive marketing information about new products or services via traditional mail"

Interesting reading.

In addition to the apparent preference customers (in the above research) showed for Letters over Email, the Royal Mail has seen a huge increase in parcel traffic due to the very fact that (as you stated) "people use the internet to shop".

If you read around customer comments on delivery services for internet retail, the Royal Mail tends to fair well against the competition too.....
...though Amazon, a huge parcel customer for RM, are apparently getting jittery about the strikes:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=491632&in_page_id=53946&ito=1565

Will

p.s.
If you're up for some highly informed Mail Industry journalism, hop over to, and browse their news: http://www.hellmail.co.uk/

"we don't need a Royal Mail any more" (Iain Lovatt)

I think you may find some disagreement on this point too, from not only Postal Service providers like ourselves, who rely on RM for final mile delivery, but from vast array of businesses who use our services, including:

Banks/Financial Institutions,
Healthcare Providers,
Doctors (particularly patient recall letters and health information campaigns),
Politicians,
Retailers,
Legal Services,
Food Wholesalers,
Graphic Designers,
Publishers,
Charities,
Councils,
Housing Associations,
Recruitment Firms,
and a wide variety of other SME's.

Try telling them they don't need to be able to send letters to any address in the UK. Something that at present is only achieved by the Royal Mail - no one else has that kind of reach.

The impression I get from the Royal Mail is that the internal political situation between RM and the CWU is quite complex. - Both the Royal Mail and the CWU have been quoted as being committed to modernisation, though I'm not so sure they agree on what that means....

Again, head over to http://hellmail.co.uk/ for plenty of discussion articles and musings over the various factors in the Union negotiations.

Will

The best suggestion I've heard is to make the Royal Mail a partnership like John Lewis. We need to get shot of the "them and us" situation which is destroying it. All grades of staff should be accountable to the partners. All long-serving staff should generally be partners in the business. Thus empowered, the postal workers collectively are perfectly capable of modernising and streamlining. Everyone knows there is a finite amount of money available for the service.