Part-privatising the Royal Mail? Digging its grave? Lessons not learned?

That ex EU Commissoner Lord Mandy is doing the EU’s bidding in part-privatising the Royal Mail is not in the slightest bit surprising.

Labour backbencher John Grogan said three cabinet ministers had told him they opposed the plan and told the BBC:

“Is this the time for the Labour government, which is going through hard times at the moment, to completely split the Parliamentary party down the middle?

“Over 100 Labour MPs have signed a motion against these proposals – it’s going to be Peter Mandelson against a big bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party.”

Lord Mandelson, who has come under fire for choosing to introduce the bill in the House of Lords, said he was sorry for the “political pain” that the proposals were causing in Labour ranks but vowed not to “walk away” from the proposals.

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski told the BBC he would vote against the plan, because he was concerned deliveries to rural areas, like his Shropshire constituency, would be under threat if Royal Mail was run by a private company.

Good on these MPs for standing up to the élites of  the EU and skunks like Lord Mandy and the Government who are rubbing working people’s faces in the mire yet again. How many postmen and other Royal Mail workers (and their families) will suffer, in the current Brownian Depression, because of this?  They will not vote Labour again.

It was the EU that forced competition onto the Royal Mail, which is one national institution in which the free market simply doesn’t work, because delivering certain items and to certain locations are “uneconomical” and, therefore, have to be subsidised.

Lessons have not be learned from the deregulation of the buses, where rural services were axed (forcing many country folk into cars, and others – especially the elderly – into isolation), or for that matter the Beeching of the Trains (not privatisation – just butchery).

So, in digging the grave for the Royal Mail, the EU – which has no accountability or mandate to the British people – has forced part-privatisation and rats like Mandy are lapping it up.

This does not only mean misery for many Royal Mail workers, but it also will damage even further OUR postal service and OUR deliveries (they’re not Labour’s, remember). There would still be 2 deliveries a day, with mail by 7.30am, if it had not been for allowing private mail firms to cream off the best of the business.

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The empathy vote: “Mess with our mothers and fathers and we won’t vote for you”…

I had an epiphany on a doorstep in Crewe in May last year. A lady’s grandson had committed suicide, because he couldn’t find a job, she told me. She said that there was no way she – or anyone else in her family – would vote for the Party responsible. After I left the doorstep, I felt pretty sad for what had happened to a young man who had lost hope.

This lady’s story is a particularly extreme case. But there are countless other examples in the current climate where people are switching their vote from Labour or Tory because of what’s happened to a relative or friend (or switching from Lib Dem to Tory to put Labour out, for the same reason).

We may be a country of millions of single households – but we still have family ties, and we have friends – and if you mess with our spouses, or our kids, it’s one thing.

But mess with our mothers and fathers…

I wonder how many other elderly people had the shock my mum and dad had today when they opened their electricity bill and saw how much it has soared.

There’ll be plenty of other sons and daughters, who may even have to help their parents out financially as a result of soaring energy etc prices [whichever statistician made up the figures that imply inflation is slowing is taking the mick], and they have lost patience with Labour.

And these are just some of the things which explain why Labour is doing so absolutely abysmally in almost every social group, gender, and location. Its policies have hurt so many people, but they know many others who are suffering and they are voting accordingly: we shall call it the empathy vote.

The only way to repair the system is to rid it of the parasite – the Brownian Labour Government – that is causing the “toxic debt” that is destroying large swathes of our economy and society.

Brown’s new £500b ‘gamble’ … But then it’s not his money

As the real economy collapses around him, Brown is planning to announce another bailout, this time a £500,000,000,000 (enough 0s there?) ‘gamble’, as today’s Telegraph describes it.

Though it’s our money, not his, and the worst sort of gambler is one who takes ‘excessive risks’ with other people’s money.

Which is just what the banks stand accused of doing…

… so what is the difference between Brown and bankers? Very little, let’s be honest.

It’s no wonder he’s doing so badly in the opinion polls.