Postal Voters

Royal Mail workers, who doubtless know as little about what's good for them as medical workers know about patient care, have voted against privatisation of the service. More than ninety-six per cent opposed the sell-off, on a turn-out of seventy-four per cent; so in the absence of the usual excuses we can doubtless expect comparisons to Hitler's plebiscites in the near future. The Government has promised that at least ten per cent of shares in the privatised company will go to the proles, and the company has promised that terms and conditions will not be affected except when they are. Royal Mail has also proclaimed that privatisation would "combine the best of the public and private sectors", which means that public money will be used for private profit in the great public-service tradition of Network Rail, Southern Cross, G4S, Serco, ATOS Healthcare and so forth. "Our plans are not new," squealed Michael Fallon, who is something or other at the Ministry for Profiteering and apparently believes that workers tend to oppose the pilfering of the public sector out of sheer antiquarianism. Fallon pointed out that Parliament debated and backed the privatisation two years ago; and it will indeed be a sad day for democracy when some thousands of mere taxpayers can outvote the nods and winks of a few hundred time-servers, seat-warmers, chancers and show-offs in the House of Claimants.