Selling off the Royal Mail? But who will deliver my restraining orders?

Fine. I'm actually gonna do it. I'm going to discuss something I dismissed out of hand last week.

Oh course, that means I will talk about the privatisation of the Royal Mail, because there's no way I'm covering the more serious / depressing stuff without way more chocolate and tact than I currently possess. Even though, in truth, the Royal Mail sell off is very depressing to start with.

While I'm about to praise the hell out of the Royal Mail, I still find this hilarious.

For the sake of transparency, I may not be the most unbiased or fair commentator on this issue. Without going to overtly boring detail about my job, I work in an eBay store and I am heavily involved in the sale and dispatching of orders. So I have to deal with couriers, and by logical extension, the Royal Mail a lot. So while not totally unbiased, for once I have sort of experience in what I'm waffling about this week.

And in my experience, dear lord do I like the Royal Mail the way it is now. Currently, we exclusively use Royal Mail's tracked services – their Signed For services, International Signed For and Special Delivery. And we use them in great confidence. They are delivered quickly, efficiently, and intact to the correct address... which is not something I could say about my experience with other private courier services. Royal Mail has basically priced themselves out of heavier, bulky packages for the most part, and whilst I won't name names, we can't seem to go more than a day with a different courier company without something going hideously fucking wrong.

Mis-sorted to wrong depot. Box looking like it's been delivered by the median of kicking instead of van. Courier unable to find house after we sent them a god damn map and picture of house. Box with six inch nails driven into it. Courier drove past at a billion miles an hour and couldn't be fecked to drop off the package. These are all things that I have experienced, and have come to wearingly expect from private courier companies. I've seen parcels go to China, get caught in customs for a few months before returning in better shape than a two-day fifty-mile round trip with a courier. We have a code, called '<courier name> ready,' which means 'to package with such oversight and severity that the contents are protected up to a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.' Once, when testing the suitability of packaging, we jumped on it, because that's how far we felt we needed to test it for private couriers.

...and Royal Mail, in all the time I've been with them, have lost a parcel of ours... once. Just once. The person above me, who's done this for years has likewise only seen one parcel go walkies before, making it to a grand total of two parcels over many years. Impressive! And our parcels go to and fro looking pristine and intact.

So the announcement of the sell off of Royal Mail has filled me with absolute fucking dread.

Royal Mail has always treated our kit with absolute care and professionalism. And over the year's that's going to change.

Parcel prices aren't protected by law – those prices will go up. First class stamp prices aren't protected by law – those prices will go up. Six days a week delivery? Yeah, that'll last. Universal coverage of the whole of Britain? Pfft, no one goes there, no money there, scrap it! More costs to businesses to ship! Yay!

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

Look, Vince Cable? Mr Vinny C? You know what a fucking service is, don't cha?

A service is something you provide because it provides a benefit beyond the black dotted line. Let's look at Braintree Freeport, for example. They pay for a free bus to shuttle people back and forth from Braintree town centre and Freeport. This costs them a load of money, and do they do that from the sweet nougaty goodness of their own hearts? NOPE. They do it because it shuttles customers to them. Sure, some may be using it to be just cutting some walking time down, but the sheer amount of people it encourages to go to Freeport to spend money out of sheer bloody convenience makes it worth it. Selling off the Royal Mail would be as stupid as selling off our electricity, gas and train services OH WAIT WE DID THAT. AND WHAT THE FUCK DID WE GET, VINNY C?

For those of you not from Britain, I can assure you it wasn't endless cheap electricity and a wonderful train service.

No. Not in the least. Those services are a pile of expensive, unless shite, are conclusively the worst in Europe, which we still for some inane reason the British tax payer still subsidizes, and even more insultingly, we have a load of British customers paying money to France because EDF are one of our biggest energy supplies.

Not that I'm a Francophobe or anything, I'm just tapping that sweet, sweet, French-hating teat for views, you see? And please, if I saw another country stupid enough to let me sell them power I'd be all over it. Shine on EDF, and may the confusion between you and the EDL remain slight and fleeting.

And one of the few places are economy is still well and kicking is on the internet, providing goods and services and revenue to our country's coffers all posted over... the Royal Mail. Ah. You see, there's that service aspect thing again. Sure, it costs the country money on that big dotted line, but it helps the country make money in so many different ways is cancels itself out and puts us in the black in the big picture, like having cheap trains to shuttle workers from around the country giving them greater flexibility in employment and thus keeping employment high and oh no wait-we don't do that any more. Damn it.

I mean, I don't even get the timing. The Royal Mail made profit this year! Actual money! It's a service you accept that it'll just piss away money and it came back to you in other less tangible ways and this year it went and put actual money in your hands! Keep a hold of that, for the love of god! Though admittedly, making money would strengthen a case for a sale and weaken my own point, but's let ignore the hell outta that and say – this money you intend to get? Three billion, right? How much of our debt will that pay off? Well, we owe over nine hundred billion pounds, so that three billion is...

...Yeah, I can't be bothered to work out that fucking low a percentage that is.

Ugh. Just ugh. What a bloody mess. Oh, and Vinny C, I look forward to the upcoming postal strikes, you wrinkly old cock. Well fucking done. Bloody beautiful. Way to make my job just that bit more stressful. Thanks.