As a subscriber, I very much enjoyed receiving my latest copy of the NS from you
via email. This, however, raises an interesting question; in sending out copies
of your magazine as an email attachment, are you not, in effect, showing your
lack of support fror the Communication Workers Union, in what many readers would feel is a legitimate act of industrial unrest.
Quite incredible. I'd suggest that by opening the email attachment, Dr David James has done exactly what he is accusing the New Statesman of. Don'tcha just love these lefty relics?
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In reading the details of the MiniBudget today, I see that amongst the winners will be owners of second residential properties - wow, that fine Socialist, Mrs C Booth/Blair, is certainly going to do well one day, isn't she? Not to mention Prescott, the Working Class PinUp.
Don'tcha just love these lefty relics?
No. As Rush Limbaugh would say, I HATE them.
And that's why the strike was short sighted. Mail is already down because of people E Mailing NOT writing letters; 20% of business post is sorted by private concerns and no doubt that figure will increase after the recent strikes leaving the Royal Mail with unprofitable domestic post and resultant job losses. Private courier firms already handle a significant proportion of mail order business e.g Amazon and that trend will increase. They are efficient and more reliable. Deutches Post is already taking a % of the Royal Mail's business
In the future I would suspect that the New Statesman may well consider E Mailing copies to its subscribers on a more permanent basis as are other publications
Tory talking head in judging a member of public based on letter to a publication SHOCKKAA!
One just loves the idea that we are supposed to make life difficult for ourselves just to allow the post office to employ people.
Does one? Oh, jolly good.
Equally - the postal strike has gone to show just how wide of the mark The Economist can be. Like much of the MSM it now lives and breaths New Labour - and articles about the weak position of David Cameron and Brown going to the polls arrived on my doorstep a few days ago.
Thanks to the CWU I could read these articles with 20-20 hind sight - which unfortunately showed just how pink The Economist has become.
The low-IQ triumphalism, hubris and general hypocrisy of this blog offer a daily reminder of exactly why the Conservatives were booted out of office in 1997 and why even New Labour under Brown is preferable to their return.
Your attempts at joined-up thinking are usually as embarrassing a failure as your "articles" are badly-written. If the cliche did not exist your career as a columnist would have been impossible.
The writer to the NS was wryly raising a question for discussion.
Your blundering incomprehension says far more about you than it does about him.
Righty cretin.
Whatta schmuck!
Sending messages by post and (to an extent) the dead tree press will be gone within 10 years. Only die-hards will avoid using the pillar-box, and only people like me who prefer doing the Times and Telegraph crossword on paper rather than online will still buy papers.
The post office and the dead tree press are finished.
So, kingcnut, in what way are you being forced to read Iain's musings, and go to the trouble of posting on this blog?
And don't you feel there's been a touch of hypocrisy in the Govt's behaviour recently (she commented 'wryly')?
King Cnut says: "Your attempts at joined-up thinking are usually as embarrassing a failure ...If the cliche did not exist your career as a columnist would have been impossible."
Ah, yes! Good old "joined up thinking." Harriet Harmonesque/Tessa Jowellesque socialist clichés are OK, though?
"Your blundering incomprehension ...". Feverish over-statement is OK?
We wouldn't want to misjudge your writing ability.
king cnut (are you spelling that correctly?). This blog also offers a daily reminder of how your lot are on the WAY OUT - at last.
king knut [7.24 PM] You say, "The writer to the NS was wryly raising a question for discussion."
Oh I see! Just raising a question for discussion. That's all right then.
And what, pray, does Your Majesty have to say on the interesting question, so wryly raised? Does sending out e-mail attachments undermine legitimate industrial action?
Do share your thoughts with us. We promise we will try to keep up.
Perhaps he just has a sense of humour and can appreciate the irony!
I don't want to cast any aspersions on the good Dr James, but could there be a reference here to Simon Winchester's book _The Surgeon of Crowthorne_, about the late 19th-century doctor W.C. Minor, who was a major contributor to the _Oxford English Dictionary_ while incarcerated in Broadmoor? Crowthorne is where Broadmoor is.
Sorry - I'm going to sound a discordant note.
If you look really hard at the Post Office as a business, you can see a couple of problems. The first is the massive "privatisation loan" that it was saddled with when it was hived off as a government-owned corporation. This was a "very clever" invention of the then-Chancellor-now-PM, and inevitably the loan interest infects every moment of activity in the PO now.
The second is the removal of the monopoly on most forms of profitable post business. This seems to have been the responsibility of the Dept of Trade, in the time of a certain lady called Hewitt. As a consequence, the PO has to try to drive a profit out of activities that were largely peripheral in the old days.
The so-called Spanish Practices that seem to be the core of the strike are nothing other than aleviations typical of historical practice in the public sector, when trying to avoid giving people on almost unbelievably low salaries even the most minimal pay rise. Such things are not unique to the Post Office. Anyone wishing to stick their noses unfashionably close to nurses' pay will find a similar stink.
I don't support the strike, any past strike or any future strike. At this moment, I have three premium bond wins somewhere in the ether between wherever they come from and where I am. But I do recognise that the Post Office employees have a credible grievance and the Post Office itself has been put in a position where it can't afford the basic minima of a respectable employer. It is easy to say "I blame the government", but in this case I certainly do, and I believe I am right.
Amongst the predictable rabid nonsense there is one faintly sensible question: does email undermine the posties' strike?
No.
The NS is available online in any case.
Pretty short discussion, knut.
You get what you are worth, idiot.
Trumpeter says: "Oh I see! Just raising a question for discussion. That's all right then."
No, no! Not "just raising a question for discussion"! "Wryly raising a question for discussion!" It was a wry - nay, almost Cowardian in its eye-brow raised insouciance! - question for discussion.
But the peasants over on Iain Dale's Diary didn't have the nous to catch the lilt, although we rose to Iain's defence. (Funny how potent cheap music is.)
I suspect that the good Doctor is having a belly laugh if not ROFL. Iain? Possibly?
Chris Paul, why do you capitalise a common noun? Are you in awe of professional people?
Chris Paul:
A search reveals that Dr David James is a consultant forensic psychiatrist for the North London Forensic Service and FTAC, and is associated with Broadmoor (i.e. at Crowthorne) in some way that I can't find, but he gave a lecture there in January. If he is ROFL, I am sure that he is doing it in a thoroughly decorous and professional manner.
I suppose the good doctor justifies his views in exactly the same way as Labour Ministers with multiple homes who will greatly benefit from the changes to Capital Gains Tax.
The biggest mistake the Post Office made was not diversifying by becoming an ISP in the 1990s. They lost their telecommunications infrastructure when BT was split off but they could've got someone else to do it and brand it Royal Mail.
I can still see the advertising campaign in my mind today: "Here's your Royal e-Mail".
Well, it's a valid conundrum. How do we show support for workers in struggle to preserve their jobs, pensions and the integrity of a public service? Why is someone a "relic" just because they have class awareness? If you are affluent enough that you can pretend that the class system doesn't exist, well, good for you. Most intelligent people realise that there is a class system, that the rich are getting richer, the rest of us are working harder but getting poorer, and somehow the erosion of pension rights has come to be seen as natural or inevitable. Don't you just love these Tory fools who think they're alright, Jack?
I'm a tory but i support the right to strike because I am a libertarian. Are you seriously suggesting that we should force people to work under any terms and conditions? Are we the Chinese? Are you saying you want slaves. Slave states are very unproductive. In addition the management of the post office is destroying it. Can anyone seriously say that it's better since Leyton and Crozier took over? Check into the hotel reality. And lastly the post office strike last week was a major reason in why Brown bottled it. His lackeys didn't even know that a strike was occurring and flew into a state of terror on hearing about it. We have a lot to thank the posties for whether they intended to produce such a result or not.
"Lefty relics", Iain? The postmen (never the most militant of trade unionists, to say the least) are acting against an EU directive. Don't you approve of that? After all, who else is actually doing any such thing?
Ignorance is bliss!Before Leighton and crosier you used to have two deliveries,1st one usually done by 10.30.now mail is being delivered at 300pm.now I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box but this appears to be a worse service,I think these guys got a £800000 bonus for doing this,now all new staff are starting on a 24hour week.and they must be flexible.the queue must be miles long waiting to get in.As far as competitors?I didnt get any mail while the strike was on so where they?As for processing mail,it showed one of royal mails rival companies on the news.there were about 10 people in a warehouse with a processing machine its laughable.so instead of slagging the postmen of ask some questions of the people who are supposed to be running the company,and dont believe all you read in the papers.ie Gordon brown "labour" leader
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