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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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.

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For those of you who don't know the context here:

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.

I think you're somewhat confused by the fact that the parent organisation for the the Royal Mail[1] was called the General Post Office until 1969 then the Post Office [corporation] until 2000. It was then briefly Consignia in 2000, then Royal Mail Group in 2001.

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?

Yes you're right I am confused. Do you know if there's some sort of internal market within the post office, similar to how GP surgeries run in the NHS? Or some sort of franchise system? I think that's what's thrown me a bit. I've heard individual post offices being talked about like they're 'owned' by a specific person and typically the people referred to are business types who have multiple things going on

Sub-Post Offices are basically franchises, and these are the ones affected by the IT disaster. Branches owned directly by Post Office Ltd. are referred to as Crown Post Offices.

Henry VIII founded the Royal Mail in 1516. Charles I wasn't born until 1600.

> the post office going bust, and then nationalised would be a good outcome.

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.

it is already nationalised: it's a state owned company

the only shareholder is the secretary of state for business, energy and industry (which you can see in its accounts)

The Post Office Ltd. retail business wasn't privatised, it was split from the rest of Royal Mail Group during the privatisation process. I'd assume the potential liabilities from Horizon are part of the reason it was retained, beyond the fact the Post Office retail business is generally loss making.

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