"Dan Stephenson" wrote in message
news:2014030120331869307-stephedanospam@maccom...

On 2014-02-28 08:58:42 -0600, S Viemeister said:

On 2/28/2014 9:55 AM, James Silverton wrote:
It's perhaps OT but the British Royal mail is to raise the price of a
1oz first class stamp to GBP 0.62. That's USD 1.03 and makes the US
first class stamp at USD 0.49 sound like a bargain.

Royal Mail was recently privatised...

And now only people who send mail pay the price, rather than it coming
from the general tax base. Cool!

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Actually, it returned a surplus to HMG most years so the tax payer did not
subsidise people who wanted to post letter.

And now I'll guess that you're going to ask why did privatisation (or the
preparations for privatisation) make the prices jump up so much.

Well that'll be because as a private entity it can't be seen to be given a
monopoly and competition had to be allowed

and, predictably, the competition picks off all of the easy to
collect/deliver, individually, profitable post leaving the RM with all of
the hard to collect/deliver, individually loss making post. So in effect
there is no longer a cross subsidy from bulk mail to domestic mail, or from
urban areas to rural area

be careful what you wish for

tim