Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Valmy]

Wait the Brits don't have a public mail service? Really?

Huh.

[Sheilbh]

Wait the Brits don't have a public mail service? Really?

Huh.

Privatised 5 years ago - a plan that actually started under New Labour in a full New Labour moment

[Valmy]

How is that working out? Can you get your letter to that cave on the Isle of Skye delivered?

[Sheilbh]

How is that working out? Can you get your letter to that cave on the Isle of Skye delivered?

Yeah they still have a universal service obligation:
https://www.royalmailgroup.com/en/about-us/regulation/how-were-regulated/universal-service-obligation/

Universal Service Obligation

Royal Mail is the designated provider of the Universal Postal Service – the six-day a week, one price goes anywhere postal service that Royal Mail delivers to 30 million UK addresses. This is often referred to as the Universal Service Obligation.

Ofcom is the postal services regulator. It is responsible for safeguarding the one price goes anywhere, affordable Universal Postal Service to all UK addresses.

I think it's going fine. It's kind of weird Royal Mail who do the delivery seemed the problem child (lots of issues with the unions etc), but have been okay more or less since privatisation. The Post Office (Post Offices - not delivery), on the other hand are still state owned and have been at the centre of one of the most disgraceful corporate scandals I can think. They've recently settled it but it was causing lots of commercial lawyers like me no end of panic because their conduct was so bad that the High Court was really stretching their interpretations of the law

Luckily they've settled and order has, we assume, returned

Edit: Had to look up Unipart - they were a subsidiary of British Leyland who are a notable omission on that list

[Tamas]

How is that working out? Can you get your letter to that cave on the Isle of Skye delivered?

Yeah they still have a universal service obligation:
https://www.royalmailgroup.com/en/about-us/regulation/how-were-regulated/universal-service-obligation/

Universal Service Obligation

Royal Mail is the designated provider of the Universal Postal Service – the six-day a week, one price goes anywhere postal service that Royal Mail delivers to 30 million UK addresses. This is often referred to as the Universal Service Obligation.

Ofcom is the postal services regulator. It is responsible for safeguarding the one price goes anywhere, affordable Universal Postal Service to all UK addresses.

I think it's going fine. It's kind of weird Royal Mail who do the delivery seemed the problem child (lots of issues with the unions etc), but have been okay more or less since privatisation. The Post Office (Post Offices - not delivery), on the other hand are still state owned and have been at the centre of one of the most disgraceful corporate scandals I can think. They've recently settled it but it was causing lots of commercial lawyers like me no end of panic because their conduct was so bad that the High Court was really stretching their interpretations of the law

Luckily they've settled and order has, we assume, returned

Edit: Had to look up Unipart - they were a subsidiary of British Leyland who are a notable omission on that list

Private enterprise flourishes while the state-owned part is corrupt and ineffective? Shocking! Don't tell Tyr.

[The Brain]

In Sweden postal services were demonopolized 25 years ago.

[HVC]

What was the scandal?

[Sheilbh]

Private enterprise flourishes while the state-owned part is corrupt and ineffective? Shocking! Don't tell Tyr.

I mean let's not go crazy here - I said it's fine

It's dropped out of the FTSE 100 for example where I think it was for a while and I don't think it shows any sign of heading back, but I could be wrong.

It's a really interesting business actually they have the power to run private prosecutions which is quite rare for a company (largely in postal fraud but also for dangerous dogs) and something they do very regularly. Also one of relatively few big listed companies I imagine with a number of people with no university degree in their senior leadership. I understand quite a lot of people work their way up (similar in the union of course, former Home Secretary, Alan Johnson was an ex union leader then Labour MP etc).

[Josquius]

.

How is that working out? Can you get your letter to that cave on the Isle of Skye delivered?

Yeah they still have a universal service obligation:
https://www.royalmailgroup.com/en/about-us/regulation/how-were-regulated/universal-service-obligation/

Universal Service Obligation

Royal Mail is the designated provider of the Universal Postal Service – the six-day a week, one price goes anywhere postal service that Royal Mail delivers to 30 million UK addresses. This is often referred to as the Universal Service Obligation.

Ofcom is the postal services regulator. It is responsible for safeguarding the one price goes anywhere, affordable Universal Postal Service to all UK addresses.

I think it's going fine. It's kind of weird Royal Mail who do the delivery seemed the problem child (lots of issues with the unions etc), but have been okay more or less since privatisation. The Post Office (Post Offices - not delivery), on the other hand are still state owned and have been at the centre of one of the most disgraceful corporate scandals I can think. They've recently settled it but it was causing lots of commercial lawyers like me no end of panic because their conduct was so bad that the High Court was really stretching their interpretations of the law

Luckily they've settled and order has, we assume, returned

Edit: Had to look up Unipart - they were a subsidiary of British Leyland who are a notable omission on that list

Private enterprise flourishes while the state-owned part is corrupt and ineffective? Shocking! Don't tell Tyr.

The post office part is going so bad because of various privatised aspects of it. The standard laws of the world that privatisation almost inevitably leads to corruption remain intact.

[garbon]

Royal Mail is generally pretty shit.

[Sheilbh]

What was the scandal?

The Post Office is a bit like a franchise in the UK. Lots of little shops up and down the country become sub-postmasters and open a little post office at the back of the shop. And there's bureaucracy with that but they make a bit of extra money from it and they provide a useful public services.

As part of that the Post Office made their sub-postmasters buy a piece of software called Horizon. It was part of a big computing push by the Tories in the mid-90s and developed by Fujitsu. The idea was that it would be software used in the post offices, the benefits system and basically be used to process payments, in theory it would help reduce fraud. It cost a huge amount of money as PFI project and then the Labour government (after 97 pulled out). The Post Office sort of re-purposed it to just work as a payments system through which the Post Office processed people's payments through various terminals. It also did accounting reporting so it would update the Post Office about turnover etc on a monthly basis.

The first problems were identified in the early 2000s. Basically the system didn't work the way it was meant to so it was misreporting figures to the Post Office who were aggressive with this. So they would terminate sub-postmasters and for some big sums they would pass it on to the police and prosecute. For example, one sub-postmaster was charged theft and false accounting for around £75,000 based on the sums in Horizon. She was convicted and jailed. Over the course of this entire scandal dozens of people lost their jobs, there were numerous prison sentences, bankruptcies, people re-mortgaging their house to re-pay the Post Office and at least one documented suicide.

And now it gets, somehow worse.

In 2012 the Post Office conducted an independent investigation into Horizon which wasn't very deep, so they commissioned a second report in 2013. This report found that Horizon was "not fit for purpose", it documented thousands of communication errors and issues with out of date hardware. All of which led to the reporting of millions of pounds worth of losses. Rather than investigate the errors, the Post Office had pursued their sub-postmasters. Instead of fessing up, the Post Office demand all material is returned by the IT investigation firm and basically bury the report. It then gets leaked to the BBC (Panorama do an excellent show on this) which causes the Post Office to offer private mediation to sub-postmasters - 90% of the claims are dismissed. And Parliament starts investigating the IT firm from the second investigation testifies that they were obstructed and not given enough information to properly investigate the errors or issues with Horizon.

Eventually in 2017 this gets to litigation through a class action (not common in the UK, but growing). The Post Office instruct two very good commmercial law firms, I think they have at different points 4 QCs as lead counsel - and they are defending against ordinary individuals. It runs for two years the Post Office is extremely aggressive. But the High Court's judgment (which wasn't even the full trial judgment I don't think) in 2019 said that the Post Office's case "amounted, in reality, to bare assertions and denials that ignore what has actually occurred, at least so far as the witnesses called before me in the Horizon Issues trial are concerned. It amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat."

And as I say the judge was incredibly creative in his interpretation of the law - so he said the Post Office owed sub-postmasters a duty of good faith, which is the case in some English law contracts. But then the judge had to imply terms to give effect to that good contract - the sub-postmasters proposed 21 implied terms. Generally judges don't like implying terms in English law and good faith is often a bit wooly. There's a few judgments bobbing around. But the judge implied 17 of their 21 clauses in whcih caused a lot of immediate panic. Because he was implying things like providing adequate support and training, investigating shortfalls etc.

That's calmed down a bit because I think the general view is that it's very much to do with this case and the Post Office had a very aggressive contract with sub-postmasters and then they were treating them like they were being sued by Fujitsu itself. And saying, for example, Mrs Seema Misra of West Sussex (the lady who was jailed for theft etc) had entered into this contract with lots of exclusions and limitations so she couldn't bring a case. So the court basically decided to treat the sub-postmasters as more or less consumers - they were everyday, normal individuals contracting with a massive, well-respected business and it wouldn't be just to behave as if this was a commercial case between two equal parties.

We've no idea what would happen at the Court of Appeal because the judgment was so damning a lot of the Post Office management resigned and the first thing the new team did was settle the case. There's now talk of criminal prosecutions and ways to compensate the affected people.

Edit: The Panorama shows on this are really good as is the Radio 4 show (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jfyv) I think available as a podcast for the non-Brits. It really is astonishing how the company and its management behaved.

[Tamas]

.

How is that working out? Can you get your letter to that cave on the Isle of Skye delivered?

Yeah they still have a universal service obligation:
https://www.royalmailgroup.com/en/about-us/regulation/how-were-regulated/universal-service-obligation/

Universal Service Obligation

Royal Mail is the designated provider of the Universal Postal Service – the six-day a week, one price goes anywhere postal service that Royal Mail delivers to 30 million UK addresses. This is often referred to as the Universal Service Obligation.

Ofcom is the postal services regulator. It is responsible for safeguarding the one price goes anywhere, affordable Universal Postal Service to all UK addresses.

I think it's going fine. It's kind of weird Royal Mail who do the delivery seemed the problem child (lots of issues with the unions etc), but have been okay more or less since privatisation. The Post Office (Post Offices - not delivery), on the other hand are still state owned and have been at the centre of one of the most disgraceful corporate scandals I can think. They've recently settled it but it was causing lots of commercial lawyers like me no end of panic because their conduct was so bad that the High Court was really stretching their interpretations of the law

Luckily they've settled and order has, we assume, returned

Edit: Had to look up Unipart - they were a subsidiary of British Leyland who are a notable omission on that list

Private enterprise flourishes while the state-owned part is corrupt and ineffective? Shocking! Don't tell Tyr.

The post office part is going so bad because of various privatised aspects of it. The standard laws of the world that privatisation almost inevitably leads to corruption remain intact.

I bet, if the railroads got renationalised and turned to shit in 10 years, you'd find some private contractor delivering toilet rolls for station bathrooms to blame the whole thing on.

[Sheilbh]

I mean the railways were not popular when they were nationalised. They're used far more now.

British people like the idea of nationalised services, just like we like the idea of high quality public services. There's no sign we're willing to pay for either.

[Admiral Yi]

I guess it goes without saying that the author of this memething thinks the nationalization of all these companies in the first place was a thumping brilliant idea.

[grumbler]

I guess it goes without saying that the author of this memething thinks the nationalization of all these companies in the first place was a thumping brilliant idea.

I would guess that "it goes without saying" that the opposite is true.