RCI try to enforce bilingualism. Trade-union magazine UNITE #356 reports some moderate, patriotic, Left takes on well-intentioned Tory privatisation approaches and policies which are, in practice, counter-productive, but which Gordon is still failing to reverse, or to modify creatively.
08h28-BST Wednesday 30 April 2008-CE
Today is yet another day when I personally have nothing worthwhile to say, so here goes. I am listening to RCI-1 on Hotbird. Before long it will switch to French in an effort to force me to be bi-lingual and at that moment I will say “ça suffice” and MAKE it go away by switching to another channel, or another sat. Although MY brain is barren today, OTHERS have something useful to say. For example, the trade-union magazine UNITE #356:
START OF FIRST QUOTATION
POST OFFICES are central to community life in cities and villages. Rather than close them down the [UK] Government should be looking at ways to make them sustainable.
That was the message from CWU General Secretary Billy Hayes when he spoke at UNITE’s annual conference in Blackpool…
…the amount of Government money being put into the post office [is] a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared to the bail-out for Northern Rock bank.
END OF FIRST QUOTATION
I have this copy of UNITE from Cook Lady who worked in the BT phone exchange canteen. I used to be a GPO (General Post Office) phone operator full-time but did not keep in touch. I like the point above about saving the money of investors whilst letting car-less folk struggle without a post office. From a person in Saint Albans, there is a fascinating letter that the sub-editor has headlined: DIRTY TRICKS TO SABOTAGE THE POST OFFICE.
START OF SECOND QUOTATION:
I joined the GPO in 1944 as a boy messenger and ended up, 44 years later, as Acting Head Postmaster. During most of that time, telegraphs, telephones and counters all operated at a loss, which was offset by a small profit made by posts. The GPO was a public service and everyone was relatively happy, until the Conservative Government of 1979 decreed that everything had to make a profit.
As a postmaster I was sometimes ordered to provoke my staff into going on strike to save man hours because the new budgets were based on staff hours and numbers of letters handled and it was more important to count the letters than to deliver them. I always refused.
The current fuss about post offices losing money is a smokescreen. It is simply not possible to make a profit selling stamps and paying pensions and the Post Office and the Government must know it.
Was it a deliberate plan to destroy the system? Postmen are criticised for working practices, but the real saboteurs of the Post Office over the years have been the various chairmen and members of its board.
END OF SECOND QUOTATION
FIN 09h33
