https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252498245/Post-Office-st...
According to one interview I heard, part of the problem is that the level of compensation that's actually required in this case is enough to render the Post Office insolvent.
Yes. And some families cannot be made whole; people killed themselves over this.
(Just as they did over false prosecutions from "erroneous transfers" due to technical card fraud, which a researcher once alleged in The Register was propagated by the IT staff of a British bank)
That would be good IMHO. Some people will disagree, but the post office going bust, and then nationalised would be a good outcome. It should never have been allowed to be privatised, it’s a national service, a place for providing contact to many different essential national provisions.
True it needed to cut costs, moving into smaller premises does that. Even the partnership with WH Smith’s and village news agents are sensible. But it should fundamentally be a government provision.
And while they are at it nationalise Royal Mail, and properly split Open Reach from BT and nationalise that too.
The Royal Mail was founded as a public service in 1516 by Charles I and was privatised in 2010.
The Post Office was founded as a public service by Charles II in 1660 and I believed privatised in 1969.
The Royal Mail are the people moving the post around, and the post office is where you go to post something if you're not going to put it in a post box, as well as do a lot of other things like renew your passport, change money into different currencies and you can even bank cash there.
The Post Office retail chain was split into a subsidiary of the Post Office corporation called Post Office Counters Ltd in 1987, which was renamed to Post Office Ltd in 2001.
When Royal Mail Group was privatised in 2013, the loss making Post Office Ltd retail business was retained by the government.
[1] AFAICT the prominent use of "Royal Mail" for the postage side of the business seems to be fairly recent, post-GPO era thing as well?
the only shareholder is the secretary of state for business, energy and industry (which you can see in its accounts)
I strongly disagree. This mismanagement was going on long before the PO was privatised. In fact I'd argue that it was never really privatised.
We don't need a national postal carrier; a lot of post is now carried by private competitors. The Parcels operation is overpriced. Telecom has been hived off, long ago. What remains is a delivery service; and a network of Post Offices and pillar-boxes. I would instead (a) privatise the carrier service; and (b) nationalise the network of drop-off points, and make that available for use by any carrier. The PO shouldn't be things like a bank, a travel agent, or a delivery system for Social Security.
BT has similar problems, being the other graft from the same stock. I don't agree that OpenReach should be nationalised; OpenReach needs to be exposed to the bracing breeze of competition. It's currently effectively a monopoly.
From a legal perspective that shouldn't be a problem, and isn't a good argument for lesser compensation. Either Post Office Ltd can get a loan, get bought or go bankrupt, like any private company. If it's the last one that will obviously create political fallout, but resolving that isn't the job of the justice system.