Jon Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 what doe the average person get out of it. Nothing. Just another public asset taken away from us. and very probaby higher future charges to use the service in order to maximise 'profit' for new shareholders. Great, innit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrentVilla Posted April 2, 2014 Moderator Share Posted April 2, 2014 what doe the average person get out of it. Nothing. Just another public asset taken away from us. and very probaby higher future charges to use the service in order to maximise 'profit' for new shareholders. Great, innit. Ah but you forgot, the tax cuts for the rich! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 At the risk of sounding a bit thick. In reference to the Royal Mail sell off. How can the Government sell something to people with enough money to buy shares that the population owned anyway ? So it's a nationalised company that goes public to be then owned by a tiny segment of the population (as opposed to everyone owning a small bit). The tiny segment of people with money to burn buy the shares and make more money but what doe the average person get out of it. The average person gets nothing out of it. It is taking something that we all own in common, and selling it to private individuals and the hedge funds they hide behind, for less than it is worth. Basically handing our money to the wealthy. Beyond that, it means giving control of a future income stream to the same people, who want it because they know they will make more money from it in the future, again at our expense. The reason they think they can get away with it is that people don't feel a direct connection with the Royal Mail - most know in some way that we all own it, but it's a fairly remote institution in some ways, and they don't see a connection between this privatisation and them being any worse off. When charges go up and staff are laid off, we will be told that it's to remedy previous "inefficiency", rather than that it's a direct act of exploitation. From the Government's point of view, as well as handing wealth to their mates, it's a way of finding more money in order to help conceal their mismanagement of the economy. But it's selling capital assets (underpriced) and using the money as revenue income, which again is economic folly. When Thatcher did this, Macmillan and others criticised it as "selling the family silver". 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 People still post things? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MakemineVanilla Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 The lesson to learn from Cable's cock-up of the sale of Royal Mail, is just how useless people prosper in politics and how disastrous they are when they finally get a job. What is clear about Cable, is that he has been a failure in every job he has ever done. A quick scan of his CV and you find that he has never held a job for more than a few years and then moved on. This seems to suggest that he is good at persuading people he is capable of doing a job but then loses it again when they find him out. This has made him perfect for politics because his 27 years of failing to get elected (1970-97) left him to concentrate on what he does best at, self-presentation and wittering wisely at a safe distance from levers of power. So basically Vince Cable has waited forty years to get his first real job in politics and makes a complete cock of it. Being that his parents worked for Terry's and Rowntree respectively, we must assume that Vince was their little chocolate teapot. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVFCforever1991 Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 People still post things? Yes, legal highs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 ignore the lefties above the average person gains plenty from the sale of the Royal Mail has nobody here ever heard of trickle down? No? Good grief, it goes like this.... you plough money into something for years, when it makes money (just when we need money and jobs) you sell it off, cheaply, to your city chums these city chums can spot QUICK BUCK as well as anyone, buy it from us without our consent, sell it on (laughably, potentially, back to us via our shitty little mean pensions) and make lots of money very quickly it's that profit the rich have just made that will SAVE the country, because some of it will be spent in the UK at restaurants where we might work or on furniture from a shop where we might work or getting the Porsche cleaned god bless 'em, they've saved us, who would begrudge our saviours a little profit on the side, they've worked hard for it 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdam_Neil_D Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 OK, thanks for the good replies. I will take a view based on the balanced replies above. I can see problems though, if they "Streamline " the Royal Mail and lay off a few 1000 people then the strain is back on the benefit system supporting these people, they will then increase tax for lower earners to pay for this. Dunno, tying myself in knots :-) (I am studying accountancy at the moment but why are things like this not investigated ? FCA etc?) I don't think lefties or righties is really the way forward in the modern world. To strive for a fundamentally fairer framework that can cope with the changing world in terms of new technologies or trading methods would be substantially better than the 2 party thing, it is obviously broke, the simple sell off of an asset to get it listed provokes such different views of it (as above) something cannot be right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 Osborne's best mate makes £36m from the politically directed, artificially low, previously advised to be too low price for Royal Mail. This is corruption in action. We need to renationalise without compensation for any shareholder with more than say £200k assets (or some other level to exclude small savers and employees who took a punt), and prosecute that corrupt little shit Osborne. Osbourne's best mate makes £36m...... Has he really? I don't think he has, do you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingfisher Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 Hot on the heels of the news that a few rich people have just gotten a whole lot richer after the government sold off one of our assets worth billions for the price of a bag of chips. A commons select committee report has concluded that the most vulnerable in society, the disabled and the poor are being hardest his by the bedroom tax. There's a shocker! It's hardly a revelation, but worth a post on here, as juxtaposed against the Royal Mail theft, it really highlights this governments raison d'être, should anybody be in any doubt. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/work-and-pensions-committee/news/support-for-housing-costs/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 why are things like this not investigated ? FCA etc?) Outside the remit of the FCA, but the National Audit Office investigated, and this is the basis of recent reports. They can criticise, but not undo what has happened. Only a future government could do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 At the risk of sounding a bit thick. In reference to the Royal Mail sell off. How can the Government sell something to people with enough money to buy shares that the population owned anyway ? So it's a nationalised company that goes public to be then owned by a tiny segment of the population (as opposed to everyone owning a small bit). The tiny segment of people with money to burn buy the shares and make more money but what doe the average person get out of it. The average person gets nothing out of it. It is taking something that we all own in common, and selling it to private individuals and the hedge funds they hide behind, for less than it is worth. Basically handing our money to the wealthy. Beyond that, it means giving control of a future income stream to the same people, who want it because they know they will make more money from it in the future, again at our expense. The reason they think they can get away with it is that people don't feel a direct connection with the Royal Mail - most know in some way that we all own it, but it's a fairly remote institution in some ways, and they don't see a connection between this privatisation and them being any worse off. When charges go up and staff are laid off, we will be told that it's to remedy previous "inefficiency", rather than that it's a direct act of exploitation. From the Government's point of view, as well as handing wealth to their mates, it's a way of finding more money in order to help conceal their mismanagement of the economy. But it's selling capital assets (underpriced) and using the money as revenue income, which again is economic folly. When Thatcher did this, Macmillan and others criticised it as "selling the family silver". Unless the average person has a pension or works for a company that invests with companies like Landsdowne. To be clear, "Osborne's mate" hasn't made £36m at all. The shares have gone up that much in value, which means that the firm will make a very small percentage of that from other people investing their cash in Royal Mail shares. If only people had the sense to look at the facts behind sensationalist headlines on left wing blogs, the world would be a happier and far less stupid place. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 From the Torygraph. Taxpayers and small investors lost out in the “second-class” privatisation of Royal Mail, a scathing official audit has found. Meanwhile, hedge funds and foreign investment firms made huge profits on the sell-off, the National Audit Office said... The sale was heavily over-subscribed by small investors, many of whom did not get all the shares they wanted. That was because ministers reserved most of the shares – almost 70 per cent – for financial institutions including banks and hedge funds. Ministers justified that decision by arguing that institutional investors were more likely to hold the shares for a long period, ensuring stable ownership for Royal Mail. However, the NAO found that most of the “priority” investors sold some or all of their holdings within a few weeks to make a “substantial” profit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 What is it in that that you think contradicts anything I've said? Please explain how you think Peter Davies had earned 36m. Of course fund managers cash in investments when they rise sharply, it means the value of their clients' funds increases. It doesn't mean they benefit other than from their standard charges as I said before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 I'm sort of with Risso that the bit that missing from the reporting is that those "priority" investors will be large pension funds etc, so a "substantial profit" in those terms is nothing but a good thing for people with pensions. Jumping into a market, and jumping out with a large profit isn't "bad" per se either. I have said before I have some sympathy with the Government on this one because politically its a bit of a no win situation. If you keep the PO you keep the massive pension problem, an inefficient antequated organisation with a militant big noisy union. If you flog it cheap you get grief, if price it too high and it doesn't sell you're stuck with it and you get the political fallout from a failed sale. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 Public Sector Bad. Private Sector Good. It's the NHS next .... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingfisher Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 Jumping into the market on behalf of someone and not making a large profit is bad, if the person you sold to does. You undervalued their asset. If at least one of the companies you sold to have given you £500,000 in the past, and is headed by someone you know personally, your client, in this case the public, might have a right to be suspicious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 Except I'm not aware that Osbourne had direct influence of the sale price, the priority buyers, the valuation of the asset or the process. The whole matter was dealt with by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which is clearly well outside Osbourne's immidiate sphere of influence. It would appear then to apply your logic that the suspicion should fall onto Vince Cable and the Lib Dems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kingfisher Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 I think old Vincent is played like a puppet. This one goes to the top. It was politically and ideologically driven. I think it's a scandal. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 no, there is no taped phonecall of Osbourne thinking up a scam, there is no grainy photo of a brown envelope there is a clear desire within this government to get the people with money richer whilst turning the screw on the poor it stinks its true to form there will be no prosecution for theft, they aren't that thick, they are clever people feathering the nests of people like themselves 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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