ROYAL MAIL privatisation, whats the point.

Anybody cashed in yet?I made £330.00 for two minutes work.Think I should send postie a Christmas card now.It might even get to him, now the efficient wealth creation sector is involved.

In this case your wealth was created by the public sector by selling you a state asset for less than it was worth.

It’s that sort of cast iron guarantee that wealth will be created which makes it so efficient.

Selling £10 notes for a fiver represents wealth creation at its most efficient.

I would like to thank all those in the public sector for their generosity in creating such wealth for me (sic). With this incredible wealth I may well be able to afford a quarter of a MTB, or perhaps new springy bits at the front. 😉

The sour grapes all seem a bit odd. A few months ago, the idea of buying shares in RM seemed rather far-fetched and risky. Then (rightly or wrongly) it happens and you have info in front of you from which to make a decision. For me it was the dividend yield v bank account. On that basis, worth risking money to invest IMO. The government is stealing money via pricing safer investments incorrectly so makes sense to take advantage of any means to compensate for this. Irrational not to.

So more people want them than could get them which is driving up the price, the initial price rise fuels further demand and more rises, wait and see where it is in 6 months before calling over/under valued.

The sour grapes all seem a bit odd.

Why is it so odd? There’s been a redistribution of wealth from everyone else’s pocket into yours.

teamhurtmore – Member

The sour grapes all seem a bit odd.

You’ve got some of my money in your pocket! How much less odd could it be?

konabunny – Member
Why is it so odd? There’s been a redistribution of wealth from everyone else’s pocket into yours.

Why didn’t you get shares then give the profit to a charity if you felt so strong about it?

Sorry Kona and NW but that is bobbins. I have replaced the government’s capital with my own – hence transferred the risk from you to me, that is what equity capital is. There was a chance that I could have lost money and in effect given you money. Hence equity capital is risk capital. Indeed IMO investing in the RM is pretty risky particularly as I have a v incomplete understanding of the business model and the future returns that I would receive. For most of the build up my views was to avoid risking my own money in this case.

Then the details came out and there is decent transparency on the immediate dividend stream. On that basis I was prepared to take on your risk as the odds seemed to be in my favour. You had the right to do the same thing. Who knows who will be correct in a few months time? You or me? Current prices are post float froth and as noted above silly to draw too much from it. But I will not be claiming that I have given you money if the price reversed sharply and that is in effect the mirror of your (false) complaint.

RM was in trouble in state hands partlybecause it was too low down the priority pecking ordering terms of access to limited gov capital. Arguably it is now in better shape to access capital and hopefully invest in a better service. For that to happen, people had to take a risk. In this case they have been rewarded SO FAR.

You might want to bleat about the pricing of the deal but that is a different thing altogether. My wife worked on previous privatisations in the past and I know how fraught pricing negotiations are. But at best, you can argue that the gov could have raised more money from the sale. But then, hindsight is a beautiful thing isn’t it. Either way the gov would be criticised!!!

Why didn’t you get shares then give the profit to a charity if you felt so strong about it?

I’m too busy robbing banks for charity.

You might want to bleat about the pricing of the deal but that is a different thing altogether… hindsight is a beautiful thing isn’t it. Either way the gov would be criticised!!!

It’s not hindsight when the failure is reasonably foreseeable. Privatisations, floats and IPOs are hardly novel.

No but this case was particularly murky. But if it was as obvious as you seem to suggest, then you can only blame yourself if you lost out. Everyone had access to the same info.

My early post was (slightly tongue in cheek) responding to the idea that the public sector had created wealth here.

teamhurtmore – Member

There was a chance that I could have lost money and in effect given you money

Yes, because with the asset so undervalued that was always likely 😕

teamhurtmore – Member

But if it was as obvious as you seem to suggest, then you can only blame yourself if you lost out.

Not at all- the nation was always going to lose out, this isn’t about individual profit, it’s about national loss.

Well I got some but am holding – bit of a drop today I see, no doubt due to the likelihood of a strike from people who own part of their employer. Anyway, I’m interested to see how the company deals with the challenges it faces now it has the freedom of being a private company.

Just spent some of my well deserved investment on Champagne and cigars. Wonder what PostieRICH will spend his £900.00 on?

Well as it stands £3500 but unable to “cash in” for 3 years so if I,m still around probably retrain as a cycle mechanic 🙂

Rich

The free market will set you free!Good luck.

Topped a fiver this morning 😯

Sorry for being slow. But referring to a couple of posts earlier do we or don’t we have the cheapest telecoms and utilities charges in Europe

Energy costs are competative, but not the cheapest. according to this

http://www.energy.eu/

some interesting stuff on that page, I never realised how good the UK was doing on implementing renewables.

Can’t find a similar chart for comms, Yesterday we had a trhead and Sweden was certainly cheaper and better than the UK. I would say here in Germany costs are about the same, but services(technical) are better.

We’re averagey/just under for energy and telecoms. Hard things to compare, especially telecoms, as there’s no simple like-for-like.

MSP – Member

some interesting stuff on that page, I never realised how good the UK was doing on implementing renewables.

It’s either the single biggest source, or just about to become the biggest energy source, in Scotland. I was really surprised by that tbh.

Actually just looking deeper at that page, the chart on renewables is misleading, the UK are well behind, the chart shows the shortfall from the 2020 target, bit of a silly way to present the data IMO.

Well I’m thanking the Gods of the Free Market for my 10% energy price hike announced yesterday. I will simply follow the gospel of capitalism, and the endless choice of competition it offers me, and switch to one of the multitude of rival suppliers ruthlessly fighting for my custom in this most cut-throat of markets.

I feel sure that this will deliver huge savings, as none of the others will do anything so cynical as raise their prices exactly in line with British Gas within 3 days, as that would render the whole exercise utterly futile an pointless. And would also bring about suggestions of operating a cartel. And we all know that just isn’t how capitalism works at all

God bless Milton Friedman and privatisation

Too many people don’t switch when they could/should which does rather mess up the free market thing.

So you really believe that within a week all the other energy companies won’t have raised their prices the exact same amount as British Gas?

You’re probably right. The fact that that’s whats happened every single other time since the whole ridiculous charade of ‘choice’ was foisted on us, is probably just a massive and wholly inexplicable coincidence. And definitely not a cartel at all

Too many people don’t switch when they could/should which does rather mess up the free market thing.

How does it mess up the free market thing ? If everyone switched to the cheapest gas and electricity supplier all the others would go bust. How would that help the “free market”.

The free market for the utilities is false and artificial.

Well I’m quite happy that according to that web site im paying virtually the cheapest gas prices in Europe

If everyone switched to the cheapest gas and electricity supplier all the others would go bust.

Well that would apply to any market but it’s not like that. Do all people use the same car insurer? Suppliers price at a level that reflects how keen they are to attract people, if prices are so low that everyone starts to switch over at some point they’ll just start to increase prices – they can only deal with so many customers anyway.

but it’s not like that

No, but that’s exactly what would happen if your suggestion was a reality – it would be the logical conclusion.

But as it exists at the present the system relies heavily on a significant amount of people paying more than they should for their energy supply, without that caveat the system would collapse leaving only one energy supplier.

So you can’t on the one hand claim that everybody should go for the cheapest supplier whilst on the other hand hope that not everyone goes with the cheapest supplier.

BTW I can’t believe that you are comparing the car insurance market with an energy market dominated by six big energy companies.

A week ago SSE announced price rises more than 3 times the rate of inflation, simultaneously it was widely reported that it was expected this would trigger similar huge price rises from the other energy suppliers.

No one felt the need to explain precisely why the other energy suppliers would also increase their prices by a similar amount. Apparently just the fact that one has increased its prices is enough to justify others doing the same.

So there you have it, the “free market” in the utility/energy sector drives prices up, the very opposite of what we are told is suppose to happen.

.

im paying virtually the cheapest gas prices in Europe

You are not paying the cheapest gas prices in Europe, although you are paying the lowest taxes on gas in Europe. This is a direct reflection on government policy and has absolutely nothing to do with the energy companies.

And you would expect the UK to have some of the lowest gas prices in Europe, the UK is after all a significant producer of natural gas, ie, the UK is the 18th largest producer of natural gas in the world, how many other European countries compare with that ?

If you exclude the taxes, which has nothing to do with the energy companies, French domestic consumers pay approximately the same for their gas as British domestic consumers.

France ranks 68th in the world with regards to natural gas production, a far cry from being 18th.

Why do people refer to the market for energy as a free market when it is nothing of the sort?

RM over a £5 🙂

Whoever you buy your power from buy some shares in that company.Give and take etc.Its what I,ve done.

I work as a parcel delivery driver and since the re-vamp of the local posties hours, and increased charging have seen a big rise in mail pack deliveries (Moto Gp, Concert, flight tickets etc) apparently the RM previously delivered these,just saying like.