Public Services Bulletin - From the BNP

1. EU THE REAL REASON FOR POST OFFICE CLOSURES

www.chichestertoday.co.uk/mk4custompages/custompage.aspx?sectionid=11963

Few people appear to be aware of the reason for the closure of thousands of our post offices, the root cause of which is the Amsterdam Treaty and the EU Postal Services Directive 97/67/EC.

This directive, with no debate by Westminster or the risible EU Regional Council so misleadingly named The National Assembly for Wales a name given by some WAG to dupe the peoples, by diktat it has been imposed on OUR government to allow the German Post Office (the Bundespost) to operate in the UK. Not surprisingly, the Bundespost has creamed off millions of high revenue business post from The Royal Mail. If, for any reason, the Bundespost decides not to deliver its mail, the Royal Mail has to deliver it at a cost to the Bundespost of only 14 pence per letter.

At the same time we, the British public, are paying 23 pence per letter for second-class post,
a price scheduled to rise yet again. Hence, we are subsidising foreign competition to the tune of
9 pence per letter. The new postal charging system, recently introduced to comply with an EU
Directive, has forced the Royal Mail to price itself out of handling many packages which hitherto
it could deliver at a profit, thus driving the delivery of these items into the hands of private (mainly German) contractors.

Given these simple facts it is not surprising that our postal services, which were once self-financing and the envy of the world, in common with hundreds of other successful British businesses over the past thirty years, have been decimated by virtue of our membership of the European Union.

The Bundespost is protected by the German government who flatly refuse to implement these same EU Directive, thus preventing foreign competitors into Germany, for at least five years.

It has been stated that our government will set the level of subsidy the Royal Mail may receive from the taxpayer. Whatever figure is decided upon Gordon Brown & Alastaire Darling, or their successors, will have to go cap-in-hand to Brussels for permission. Thus, we are governed by foreign Commissioners in Brussels, for whom we did not vote and cannot sack, imposing laws overriding Justice and democracy in OUR Country, whether we see that as these United Kingdoms or Wales, Britain or Westminster, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

(EU Commissioners recently overruled a decision, in favour of a British company, by the European Court of Justice – Forcing a profitable, legal business to close and force its employees out of work; like so many other businesses destroyed by membership of the centralised EUropean soviet).

The Institute of Directors has shown that the cost of membership of this undemocratic and corrupt EU is £1,800,000 per hour. Separate Independent accountants have calculated that the cost of our vassal status in the EU, with effect from 1st January, will rise to just under £100,000 per minute 24 hours a day for 2007 - the cost will rise again in 2008.

We are steadily being made poorer, and less free to run our own affairs or control our own borders, by the EU and paying handsomely for the privilege of being overrun by incomers at a rate with which we can not cope but for which we must pay. How can any but the corrupt claim membership of this unaccountable EU is anything but calamitous for these islands.

No British Government body has ever dared to produce a clear and balanced cost benefit of our
membership, nor define the immense benefits of self determination, independence, liberty and freedom to exercise our Sovereignty in the interests of the British tax payers and future generations of our peoples.

The anger expressed in your columns at the closure of post offices should be directed - not at the EU - but at those British politicians who insist we should remain members of the EU.

The only peaceful way Britain can restore its independence is for the electorate to vote for a
prospective MP who is committed to repealing the 1972 European Communities Act, thus freeing us from the loathsome European Union. The alternative will be Civil Disobedience as crippling poverty of the collapse of our industry continues emulating fishing, farming, auto production, aviation and so much more – the latest example being The Royal Mail.

2. GOVERNMENT CLAIM CLOSURES SAVE MONEY IS FALSE

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/14/npost114.xml

The most irritating words a woman ever hears are: ''Look what you made me do.' Makes you ball your fists and gibber, that sentence.

Out of the mouth of a child who has just upended his M&S organic orange juice, it's just about forgivable: he didn't want his vitamins, he was told to pipe down and drink them and now the sticky mess all over the mat is the naggy primary carer's fault, not his. (Mum-MEE! Look what you made me do.)

Out of the mouth of a grown man, this whinging-toddler speak is unforgivable. Especially when that grown man heads the Government. Prime minister Blair (how long, O Lord, how long before we can stop using that descriptor?) is feeling very sulky about post office closures.

This week he said that the whizzy scheme to shut them down by the several thousand is OUR fault, not his.

We didn't use them enough! We didn't create enough footfall! We kept going online instead! We deliberately and knowingly made post offices uneconomic, and now he has no alternative but to close them down: ''Look what you made me do.'

I think I resent our prime minister most of all when he's whining like a thumb-in-mouth pre-schooler whose blood-sugar level is too low.

I live in a tiny Hampshire village which used to have a sub-post office, and now doesn't. It was inside Mrs Crick's village shop and when the children were small we would plod the mile down the road with a pushchair. Mrs Crick sold everything a village might want, from Polyfilla and Dinky toys to groceries and birthday cards.

When she died, the shop was sold off as a private house, so the village suddenly had neither shop nor post office and there was a fair bit of fretting and moaning.

My late mother's various followers and callers at the house (four or five septuagenarian old boys scattered around the village) were all thoroughly scandalised. Mr Palmer, who brought Ma plants and saplings and great mucky handfuls of ''everlastin' onions (shallots, I realised later) never let up about the closure. Sucking gummily on his tea, he kept telling her: ''It's the old people I worry about.' The OLD people? ''Yerce, them as haven't got bikes like me. It's a long walk up to Kingsclere for your pension, and all uphill.' (It is a longish walk, though it's a two-minute drive. ''The old uns will be strapped for their weekly money.'

Mr Appleby (my old Ma's cheery mole-strangler, who came tottering round with his bits of wire and a sack for the little black corpses) wasn't a biker, but he said his niece was ''good enough to drive him up to Kingsclere every so often'.

Still, he fretted that she might be moving over Basingstoke way next summer and he didn't know what would become of him after that. (What became of all my ma's old beaux was blessedly quick and peaceful, as I recall).

So we use Kingsclere Post Office now, in the next nearest village, and we use it assiduously.

Me and my neighbour, the headhunter's wife, sometimes even hike the three miles uphill.

Even though we're both quite snappy, modern women actually, Tony – even though we both live admirably ball-juggling 21st-century lives (like Cherie), even though we're online, even though the biggest superstore in the area is helpfully our side of the Newbury logjam.

We use the post office BECAUSE it's a village amenity and we trog up there to add our footfall every chance we get.

Since the blessed First of May 1997, our opportunities to use-it-or-lose-it have become fewer.

This is not our fault but Tony's. The first irritation was moving passport forms to main post offices – so our former green hike became a carbon-heavy drive to Newbury, a hunt for parking-space and a queue running twice round the barrier and out into Corn Exchange Square before you got to ''Counter number nine, please!' Beyond annoying. But the loss of revenue for the local postmistress was more so.

In 2003, Tony signed off on the slash-and-burn decision to pay pensions and benefits directly into bank and building society accounts.

Luckily, my old Ma, who didn't have either (she kept her stash in a Post Office National Savings account) popped her clogs before I had to tell her she'd lose her weekly cash-in-hand.

And luckily, my neighbour the headhunter's wife is doughty enough to take all the time it took (''weeks and weeks!') to keep her last child's benefit book in her own hands (and the postmistress's).

Instead of -whose? Horrible Capita's, I imagine? They run the BBC licence fee now, to my undying rage.

I really don't understand why a private company such as Capita (the UK's leading business process outsourcing and professional services company, according to their bleak website) should be allowed to grub up large amounts of taxpayers' money for public services while those same public services (especially post offices and most especially rural post offices) gasp and choke for lack of revenue.

Is this joined-up government? Is Tony Blair kidding me?

The idea that he can pettishly tell us that we don't use post offices, that we've ''voted with our feet' and ''embraced choice', is mind-boggling.

The pension-book decision resulted in a deliberate – and massive – loss of revenue.

I can't remember how much money he told the nation this would ''save' at the time, but I do remember thinking that his numbers didn't add up.

They still don't add up. (Hands up who's surprised?) Yesterday he said that ''since 1999 the Government has spent £2 billion of taxpayers' money supporting post offices'. Supporting? And great heavens, with such a boggling sum?

Would that be enough to pay for Operation Telic, do you reckon?

There's been a lot of coverage of the post office closure decision, not least via this newspaper's STOP JIM campaign.

Me, I barely know who the hell ''Jim' is, nor care: he could be any one of those interchangeable on-message apparatchiks with West of Scotland accents.

But I'll bet my life he can't make the sums add up any more than I can. An annual subsidy of £144 million goes to 14,400 sub-post offices. That's about £10,000 each from ''government money', which as every Daily Telegraph reader knows is his, her or my money.

And some rural ones have as few as 16 transactions a week! That's soooo not good business! Gosh, can't have this. Something must be closed.

But all government spending is ''subsidy' -– whether it's on wars, schools, roads, rural post offices or providing Turkish translation services for newly-arrived British citizens who want to attend a Stop Smoking course ''because it's my right'. (Tuesday night's Newsnight was
a real shocker for anyone fretting about government waste.)

In order to ''save' this irritating subsidy, the Government will ''spend' £200 million in 2008 to close thousands of post offices.

Since a not inconsiderable (to me) swathe of the money the Government ''spends' and ''saves' annually on stuff starts life as mine, I feel I have some heft on how it's got and spent. Better when the sums add up, I always think.

And best of all when the sums are spent on keeping postmasters in work. Work is good for people — I do a fair bit myself.

And for every post office the Government shuts down on our behalf (to ''save' our money) there will be a wage-earner the Government has to prop up with benefits (or ''spend' our money).

Believe, I am not a sentimental woman. I don't think of my post office as a ''community lifeline' or a throwback to Olde England Heritage-land. It's a public service we pay for. It should be kept. Any chance at all, do you think?

3. FOLLY OF CUTTING THE LAST LIFELINES

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/12/npost112.xml

Traditionally, the middle of December heralds the appearance of Santa hats, office parties and trips to the post office to offload cards and parcels. Strange that this of all seasons should herald the news that up to 7,000 Post Office branches are for the chop.

For most of us, this will mean driving a bit further to another branch — hardly desirable, given Gordon Brown's wish to tax us off the roads. But to some people — particularly the old, disadvantaged and those in rural communities — the consequences are much worse.

If you cannot walk easily and cannot drive, the journey to another post office — even an urban one a mile away — may be a major undertaking.

According to a survey by Age Concern earlier this year, 99 per cent of elderly people in rural areas consider their local post office to be a 'lifeline'. But modernisers within Government and the Post Office itself operate on strictly Thatcherite principles.

While Royal Mail has roared into profit (£537 million in 2005), its Post Office operation continues to make a £110 million loss. Old-fashioned service by a postmaster who can satisfy your mailing needs and sell you half a dozen eggs, must be sacrificed, it is said, to newer
forms of technology.

In 2003, the decision to pay pensions and benefits directly into bank and building society accounts caused some branches to suffer a drastic fall in revenue. This has entrenched the view that the post office network is past its sell-by date. But life is more complicated than that.

While the internet has denied some sources of business to the post office, it has created new ones. Take eBay. One sub-post master told me: 'What I lost in pensions I made up in the extra posting. A number of regulars bring 40 or 50 parcels at a time.'

Surely, though, the greatest value is the social role provided by the post office and its accompanying shop. At a time when church, pub, school, police house and vicarage have disappeared from many communities, the post office may be the only service left and the only
rallying point for a village.

The Post Office receives a subsidy of £150 million to keep loss-making branches open but this could be far exceeded by the cost of supporting or rehousing elderly, infirm and other 'socially excluded' populations for whom life in remote communities becomes unviable once their last
lifeline has been lost. Ministers should think again.

4. FARE RISES WILL PRICE PEOPLE OFF TRAINS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/29/nfares29.xml

Plans to raise train fares by more than the rate of inflation triggered an angry response from passenger groups yesterday.

The increases will see regulated fares — such as commuters' season tickets and saver fares, where passengers must complete their return journey within a month — go up by an average of 4.3 per cent.

The remaining 60 per cent of fares, which are not subject to government controls, will rise by between 3.2 per cent and 6.6 per cent — an average of 4.7 per cent.

Commuters on the Southeastern line linking Kent to London will face a 6.3 per cent rise, under the terms of the new franchise agreement awarded by the Department for Transport.

Consumer anger was led by Anthony Smith, the chief executive of the watchdog group Passenger Focus.

'Inflation-busting price hikes on top of already high fares will make for an unhappy passenger New Year,' he said.

'If you now want to travel longer distances in the peak period and don't know exactly when you are coming back you will pay very, very dearly.

'If passengers want flexibility or have no choice about when to travel they now face off-putting prices. Levels of crowding now mean that there is no more room for manoeuvre — people are being priced off the railways just as the off-peak is also becoming crowded.'

The annual fare rises were unveiled by the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) the day after Network Rail, the not-for-dividend infrastructure company, announced that it made a £747 million profit last year.

The transport union RMT warned that the price hikes would drive people back into their cars Around £500 million came from increased track access charges levied on train operators, which in turn derive their income from passengers.

Brian Cooke, the chairman of London TravelWatch, said he was disappointed by the rises, especially on Virgin, where some fares are due to rise by eight per cent.

'A long-distance journey that cannot be planned well in advance is becoming increasingly expensive. It is in no one's interest to price people off the railways, especially on routes where cheap air travel is a viable alternative,' he said.

The transport union RMT warned that the price hikes would drive people back into their cars.

'The Government talks about the climate challenge and the importance of reducing carbon emissions, but allowing never-ending above-inflation rail fares rises will only result in more polluting road traffic,' said Bob Crow, the union's general secretary.

'It is only six months since the Commons transport select committee condemned the shambolic state of rail pricing structures and exposed the private sector's inability to operate the railways as a public service.' The Tories' transport spokesman, Chris Grayling, said the price rises
were unwelcome news for passengers. 'We have inflation-busting fare increases at a time when trains are becoming more and more overcrowded and absolutely nothing is being done to tackle the problem.

'The Government promised us big improvements in its 10-year plan — but virtually none of those improvements has happened. Now you have train companies ripping out the seats to create extra standing room and expecting passengers to pay through the nose to travel like sardines.' Atoc said the rises in fares were justified, with the revenue being spent on funding improvements to the railway.

'While no one likes to pay more for travel, we need the revenue to pay for the ongoing improvements to the railways that passengers expect. And overall satisfaction levels are now at an all-time high of 80 per cent,' said George Muir, Atoc's director general.

'Train operators will continue to raise their game, delivering further improvements to the railway.'

5. MINISTERS TO BLAME FOR EXCESSIVE PROFITS FROM TRAIN LEASES

news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2026889.ece

The Rail Regulator blamed the Government's franchising policy yesterday for many of the defects in the market for train rolling stock, as it said it was minded to order a full competition inquiry into the sector.

The Department for Transport asked the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) to examine the lack of competition for rolling stock in June, claiming that the three train-leasing companies, all of which are owned by banks, are making £175m a year in excessive profits.

The answer that came back yesterday was that the industry was indeed inefficient but the ORR concluded that 'it is evident that a number of these [negative] features arise from Government policies'.

The ORR highlighted aspects of the market such as the department making the award of a franchise so specific, that the train operator's choice of stock was very limited. The regulator was also critical of business practices of the leasing companies, including maintenance and service agreements.

The regulator's criticism of the Government gave the train leasing companies immediate ammunition to hit back. The three companies are Porterbrook, which is part of Banco Santander, Angel Trains, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, and HSBCRail.

Angel pointed out that it had invested £3bn in new trains in recent years and said: 'Angel Trains is clear that there is no case for further investigation. If, as the report indicates, it is the DfT's own franchising policy which is principally responsible for the matters
about which it has complained, DfT has the remedy for this in its own hands.'

The DfT welcomed the ORR's statement that it was 'minded' to refer the £1bn-a-year sector to the Competition Commission, claiming that the excess profits being made would equal £2bn over the life of the leases - equivalent to an 8 per cent increase in annual season tickets. The DfT added: 'The Government believes that this money would be better invested in the rail network to deliver further improvements for the travelling public.'

A spokesman insisted its policies were not at fault but he added: 'The ORR has questioned whether changes to the franchise process would help. We will be happy to explore this further with them during the consultation but find it difficult to see how it will have a significant
impact on the current market given the technical and operational characteristics of the trains and the market of which they are part.'

The ORR said there was 'very limited' choice when it came to selecting passenger rolling stock for franchised passenger services, with franchisees often having few alternatives but to re-lease the rolling stock previously in use in that franchise. 'This, we suspect, has led to higher prices and lower quality of service than would be the case in a more competitive market,' the ORR said.

The regulator will now go into a consultation period before deciding whether to make a reference to the Competition Commission, which would then launch an inquiry that could last two years.

The leasing group Porterbrook appealed for a less draconian action than a Competition Commission probe which, it said, would involve significant costs and 'would also lead to unnecessary market uncertainty'.

The company suggested a review by the rail regulator instead or an amendment to the industry codes of practice.

6. GOVERNMENT'S RAIL PLANS IN DISARRAY

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2507433,00.html

The Government´s plans for investing in Britain´s railways are in disarray after the company operating the most profitable route surrendered the contract yesterday.

GNER had signed the contract only 18 months ago, under which it had agreed to pay the Government £1.3 billion over ten years to run trains between London and Edinburgh.

Ministers were relying on the money to prop up loss-making services elsewhere, and to pay for improvements, such as longer trains and platforms, on overcrowded routes.

The failure of the contract also raises doubts about the viability of other franchises, such as South West Trains and First Great Western, where the operators have each promised to pay more than £1 billion over the next decade.

Passenger Focus, the rail passenger watchdog, said that the Government was partly to blame because it had accepted an unrealistic bid from GNER - said to be £300 million higher than any other company was willing to pay.

Anthony Smith, the watchdog´s chief executive, said: 'This shows that driving a very hard bargain with train companies may not always be in the best interests of passengers. It will do nothing to calm concerns about the premiums which have been promised by some of the other
companies.'

Tom Winsor, the former Rail Regulator, said: 'The failure of GNER´s contract has cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds. Competition for franchises has become so vigorous that companies are sometimes tempted to put in optimistic bids - and it can go wrong.'

GNER will continue to run trains on the route for up to 18 months while the Department for Transport seeks another operator. The company will be allowed to keep an undisclosed proportion of any cost savings it makes, and any revenue it receives above a certain target.

The company attributed the failure of the contract to the downturn in tourism after last year´s bombings in London, a rise in electricity prices and the emergence of a small rival company on the same route.

The transport department refused to say how much it expected to lose from the contract´s failure and would not reveal the details of its temporary agreement with GNER.

A senior rail industry source said that bidders would offer several hundred million pounds less than GNER agreed to pay last year. First Group, the biggest train company, said that it planned to submit a bid.

Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the TSSA, the white collar rail union, said that the failure of the contract showed the current rail franchising system was fundamentally flawed. 'Instead of this lottery, this franchise should be handed over to Network Rail to run it for the benefit of the passenger.'

No tags:

.