MPs are right to tell the government to speed up the compensation to sub Post Office managers who were wrongly accused of theft and fraud by their employer. It is taking far too long, with inbuilt complexity to allow Post Office delays and big fees for lawyers.
MPs should  also be critical of the continuing dire performance of the Post Office as a business owned by the state . It runs up huge  losses which taxpayers have to pay for. In the most recent year the business lost £414 million. It brings accumulated losses to a staggering £1.8 bn, and total net liabilities to £1.21 bn.In order to carry on trading with this insolvent balance sheet the Post Office relies on government continuing to pay  bills for whatever losses they make.
These losses have been going on for a long time and are not  just the  result of the need to compensate wronged staff.  £72 m of this years loss is underpaid tax and tax penalties because they did not follow the governments own IR 35 tax rules! Surely the highly paid Finance Director knew the rules?
In 2021/2 the Chief Executive presiding over these disasters  was paid £816,000 including a £401,000 bonus. Why? Last year the CEO was paid £436,000 salary, almost three times the PM but was wise enough not to take a bonus.
Taxpayers have to pay all the extra bills for capital investment and losses. The big investment in Horizon  computing lumbered us with a massively  negative return. Last year there a further bill for £133m of investment, mainly in IT. lets hope it was better managed.
Why do MPs fail to expose the disastrous financial mismanagement of nationalised industries? Why do they put up with high executive pay for lamentable performance in these concerns? If government got control of the finances of these bodies they would have money for tax cuts.
January 2, 2025
Good morning.
For the same reasons they fail to expose other things – Embaressment !
Err no ! They would just use the money to spend and waste elsewhere.
When discussing pay and contracts for these people one has to ask, who is doing the negotiating and hiring of these people ? In certain cases, they are friends of friends and, these ‘friends’ ususally turn out to be MP’s.
And when these people fail, as they so often do, where do they go ? Well of course somewhere else within the State sector.
Never let yourself believe that the UK and its ‘Upper Echelons’ are beyond corruption.
January 2, 2025
Indeed tax cuts are not very likely from this Government until perhaps just before the next general election then to be reversed immediately after the next general election.
Many clearly knew as they continued these prosecutions that those accused were innocent. But our very poor legal and absurdly expensive legal system and judges cannot escape criticism. Just the fact that so many previously good character people were all being charged was alone sufficient for reasonable doubt.
January 2, 2025
Many judges have gone along with two tier justice and absurdly harsh sentences for mere social media posts. When too will Lucy Letby get her appeal? This conviction is clearly unsafe, but this apparently is not sufficient reason to be permitted to appeal. Wes Streeting even want people to shut up about this unsafe conviction for the sake of the “victims”.
January 2, 2025
Incompetent, or, more likely uninterested, oversight from the UK government, whichever colour, we expect. Why is the question? Here is part of the answer, look at HOW MANY ministers had this job in just 14 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Under-Secretary_of_State_for_Employment_Rights,_Competition_and_Markets
So the problem is more structural than individual. This job is just a stepping stone to higher position; how many are like that?
January 2, 2025
Indeed and the dire quality Hancock, Soubry, Fallon… and all the rest.
January 2, 2025
Also look at the absurd level of train subsidies in the UK. Funding varies from region to region, with ÂŁ1.41 per passenger journey in England to ÂŁ6.51 per journey in Scotland and ÂŁ8.34 per journey in Wales. This despite almost no taxation on their fuel or VAT. Yet more efficient cars are taxed to death. Free and fair competition please. Despite this train journeys usually cost 2-20 times (20 for a full car) what is costs by car and that takes you door to door.
January 2, 2025
Takes you door to door too and gives you a vehicle to use during your trip and a place to store your luggage rather than lugging it with you all the time. More flexible and more reliable too. Often less CO2 too when accounted for properly with end connections (should CO2 quite wrongly worry you).
January 2, 2025
@Mark B +1
100% agree
January 2, 2025
Why do all rationalised industries make spectacular losses. Simple, because they know the taxpayer will bale them out
The top jobs are jobs for the boys and girls, a revolving door of failure. The CEOs flit from one highly paid post to another with zero accountability.
Her who was incharge during the Horizon scandal went on to a similar post in the money pit of the NHS.
Cutting pensioners WFA is a good way to save money to help subsidies these fat cat bonuses and losses.
January 2, 2025
@Ian Wraggg – and those we empower and pay to look after our interest, the MPs, the Government just shrug their shoulders and suggest they have other things such as the wreking ball of ideology to master before their 5 Years are up. It is not about you, the people, the country it about me,me, me…
January 2, 2025
When I read the headline, “Disastrous figures from the nationalised Post Office” I assumed this would be about people. Turned that the title referred to financial figures, but the article is about disastrous people.
January 2, 2025
Between you and Mark B all has been said. Nationalisation equals failure of service and financial loss.
Starting with Amazon , most inteernet businesses have excellent distribution and returns services, and being private work excellently.
I cannot remember when I sent anything by mail. Even Chrismas cards are created in Photoshop and sent with one click of a send button.
Rid the post office of its arcain rules that prevent it running profitably and privatise it. Better still let any willing entrepreneur start and run a service from scratch.
January 2, 2025
Post office don’t deliver mail.
How a business with a captive audience like Post Office makes a loss is very puzzling. The opportunities to make a margin on banking and selling postal items are immense plus putting a counter in an existing shop increases footfall. WHSmith has realised this.
January 2, 2025
I also think there are many things that an ‘actively’ run PO could do NS (one of them is callede good customer service!) Maybe the ‘Sphinx’ will do so, although I fear his plans are probably more inclined towards asset stripping the business and burying it in debt. The Unions could help of course but seem to have little interest in the long term interests of their members ( a bit like the railway workers of course). You can try to obstruct change for a while but eventually someone will blast through your barriers and leave you in the dust – as Fleet Street discovered in the 80’s.
When I go into WH Smiths in Wokingham, there is usually a long queue for the counter, with just one person manning the counter. Of course if you want foreign currencies, you can go straight to that counter and not wait at all. There are two ‘automated’ stamp dispensers but again one of them is often out of commission. So I try to avoid using it. We get our stamps at Tesco’s and parcels are paid for online and collected by the postman. This is what is called “progress” – you make the real world so inconvenient that your customers are forced to use other means…
January 3, 2025
I wonder if the perverters of justice in the Post Office would dare accuse a WHS Post Office of stealing. You know, someone with the resources to fight back.
January 2, 2025
Royal Mail is private.
It is the Post Office network that is public.
January 2, 2025
Utterly disgraceful, over engineered, bureaucratic as demanded by Treasury with massive payouts to Lawyers. But then this is normal, look at HBOS etc. and demonstrates the boleaux promises made by politicians.
The âwholeâ of the public sector not fit for purpose, cheap, shoddy, poorly maintained and managed. Politics and national and local level too much âcorruptionâ
Honours bought in return for favours/large donations (for public service).
If you believe a fraction of what is highlighted in a well know investigative and numerous magazine you would be disgusted. Thank goodness for the freedom of information act.
Why is nothing done? Naive, incompetent, ordered to keep quiet, you scratch my back and probably much more.
All I know is with a few honourable exceptions they are all in it and always gave been. The difference now? The spotlight of social media.
January 2, 2025
It suits MPs that the Post Office is effectively part of the semi state-owned sector/quangosphere. They can blame someone else for its failures, quietly prop it up with taxpayers’ money, benefit from union support and appointment patronage/cronyism.
We have an establishment mafia in charge of our country who are turning the UK into a poor country. I spent some time on Statista just now and got GDP per capita outside London in 2022 as varying from ÂŁ36,000 (South East) to ÂŁ24,000 (North East). Even the SE (outside London) was less than their dollar equivalent figure for West Virginia (the US’s 2nd poorest State). I’ve probably misinterpreted the data, but whatever the statistic, I know I’m getting worse off year by year and can see the people in charge are getting richer.
Reply Yes the UK like the EU is falling further and further behind the US. London remains much richer than the rest of the UK but the Mayor and the new government are doing their best to undermine it.
January 2, 2025
@Wanderer – in the UK it is not about the electorate, the people, the taxpayer funding the life style, its about the ego, the personal self-esteem (personal opinion) of those that reach Parliament to free-load. Parliament doesn’t hold the Government to account, the lies, the waste of taxpayer money, the lack of delivery – what! ‘me mate’ – I was elected, empowered and paid to serve my constituency, my country but it doesn’t mean i should do anything.
January 2, 2025
GDP in the UK is now lower than Mississipi, the poorest State in the USA. Unlike the UK, Mississipi is rapidly improving ….. whilst the UK is going down the pan, thanks to the failures of the Uni-Party.
January 2, 2025
London remind richer because that is where all the capital is directed, therefore the good jobs so that the good people are also forced to leave the Regions for London. London produces very little.
January 2, 2025
Is it true that in some areas of London 65% of the people in social housing aren’t working at all? With another 15% only working 16 hours? Why would they be given social housing in the capital where working people working full-time in productive jobs struggle to pay rent?
January 2, 2025
There needs to be some very high profile sackings amongst the failing Civil Service, Quangos, HS2 and National Industries such as the Post Office and Railways …. pour encourager les autres to deliver what they’re supposed to do; up their “game” and stop wasting ÂŁbillions we don’t have.
In the case of senior executives in the Post Office, there also needs to be some jail time.
It will never happen, because The Establishment looks after its own. Take the case of Alison Rose, who blatantly broke client confidentially …. an immediate sacking offence if you work in the banking industry. Not only did the Nat West Chairman do his level best to protect her the Government FAILED to take any meaningful action against the Chairman of a bank in which it had a major stake, thus undermining our premier industry. The DEI obsessed “loose lips” Rose, who don’t forget lied to the BBC journalist about the reason Mr Farage’s account had been closed, is now a senior adviser with Private Equity firm Charterhouse and the law firm Miscon de Reya.
January 2, 2025
The great and the good have nothing to fear even when in the wrong.
January 2, 2025
If the two main parties don’t grasp this, Reform should tell us what they would do differently in our nationalised industry return for the exchequer.
January 2, 2025
Price is a beautiful balance control in competition. Potential buyers of a product or service can assess what it is worth. If it is of good value, they buy. If it’s low quality or bad value, they can walk away and the greedy supplier receives nothing.
A key financial issue is Chief Executives’ salaries being set at the beginning of a contract. In examples like the Post Office mess, it would be better to settle the cost at the END of each year of ‘service’. Then consumers can decide whether they think it is worth buying or not. Some of those overpaid bozos would be paying the users instead, for nuisance and inconvenience, in compensation.
January 2, 2025
They need to zero in on what services are profitable; are they making the same return as their private sector competitors in each class of service?
I.e.
The travel insurance, travel money, travel cards?
Car/Pet/Home Life insurance?
Parcel deliveries are excellent value, post, worldwide, returns,
Post office banking accounts, credit cards, money transfers,
Why aren’t they making money to cover all their costs bare minimum? They should be putting aside to pay off their Horizon scandal. Otherwise, we’re all paying higher taxes for the Horizon scandal! Instead of them being forced to be more efficient, competitive and organised.
January 2, 2025
As Sir John says in today’s post, the problem with the Post Office is the senior management. The appalling scandal of the Horizon computer system is still being fought out, as they are actively preventing the payment of compensation and worse, are spending huge sums on lawyers doing so.
I find the staff at post offices courteous and helpful and I appreciate the over-the-counter banking services that they provide. Clearly the best solution is to end the contracts of those at the top and replace them with experienced managers from the private sector
January 2, 2025
Your suggested remedy for the Post Office applies to the entire Quangocracy, HS2, Railways and “OFs.”
January 2, 2025
Extraordinary, thank you for highlighting it, I havenât seen this anywhere else. I think thatâs one of the issues – people just become inured to useless and failure by such state institutions, the media donât really report it and MPs canât be bothered (or in most cases now are too clueless) to focus on whatâs happening and why. Kemi Badenoch is well qualified to focus on such failures by the state and quasi-state. I hope she takes the opportunity. I think she could usefully pay a visit to Argentina where President Milei is working wonders by hammering this kind of failure and waste.
January 2, 2025
You have clearly not been focusing on the news. Or is this another ‘Rose Spectacles’ moment like the one(s) you had with dear, Rishi ?
January 2, 2025
Clearly the Post Office business model is unfit for purpose. Unlike the banks, it will face political demands to keep uneconomic branches open, which the politicians say will be paid for by the taxpayer. I recall reading/hearing evidence to this effect during the enquiry. It is what usually happens when politicians get involved in commercial decisions. It is why nationalised industries have such a rubbish track record. Perhaps some entrepreneur will come up with a viable idea to support high street financial services hubs which offer a mix of services offered by banks, the post office and others in a more efficient way. Until that happens the Post Office will continue to rack up losses or must shut down branches. I imagine a big salary must be offered to persuade anyone to take on the thankless task of trying to run a loss making business.
January 2, 2025
Sir John
The persistent flaws with all State run organizations are that those elected to look after the taxpayerâs interest just refuse their obligations and duty. They themselves are seemingly along for a free ride while wanting to inflect the terrorism of personal ideology on the nation without accountability or responsibilities.
Then we have the indignity of friend of friends that canât get work elsewhere getting awarded with high income high reward positions without also without any accountability or responsibility attached. Then though their just basic ineptitude, or is it âwho gives a damnâ, dump the cost of their mistakes on the taxpayer.
Lets not forget, it is the Chancellor(recently Sunak, Hunt and now Reeves) that steals our money and throws it away all with the PM of the day who appointed them shrugging their shoulders as if to suggest ‘not me’
Whatâs the point of a Parliament when it can get away with doing massive damage applying massive costs on a people, a Nation, in 5-year stints. The real âblack-holeâ is a Parliament that doesnât give a dam, 5 years relatively good pay or at least better than they could achieve in the real world. After that who cares! After 5 years irreversible damage is inflicted on the people, massive unwarranted cost hitting everyone in their wallets. Its the reason proper Democracies seek approval for the direction taken every 2 years.
Then as we know from his announcement to the media 2 tier Kier doesnât give a damn about Parliament therefore democracy it is his masters at the WEF that he would be guided by.
January 2, 2025
At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious. Letter writing and use has dropped like a stone since the arrival of the home computer/e-mail etc. The Post office’s response has been to increase the cost of letter sending over and over again.
There are many parcel delivery companies available some of whom do a good job, some of whom don’t. The PO needs to develop a system of collecting parcels from the senders home and delivering to the destination at a fair price, to challenge the couriers.
Reply We are discussing the Post Office, not Royal Mail. PO runs counter services.
January 2, 2025
Really!! You’re telling me the two are entirely separate businesses.
When I take a parcel to the PO, Royal mail deal with it !
Lawd. I’m out of touch with the complexities of all this.
January 2, 2025
Almost exactly a year ago I circulated an email headed “Spare some blame for the EU”, which started:
“There are plenty of candidates for condemnation over the Horizon scandal, but so far I have not seen anybody mentioning the EU.
Having gone on protests and distributed leaflets and written letters to the press about the closure of post offices all those years ago it seems wrong that the EU is silently escaping all blame.”
It was a long email replete with references but I will only reproduce this final section:
“So here is a letter from EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes to Foreign Secretary David Miliband dated November 28 2007:
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/220920/220920_768357_75_2.pdf
“State aid N 388/2007 â United Kingdom
Post Office Limited (POL) transformation programme ”
“6. The post office network remains heavily loss making. New, more cost effective ways of delivering Government services, such as the move to direct payment of benefits, from the outdated and costly order book system, and the massive uptake in direct debit, e-mail and internet sales have had a dramatic effect on POLâs finances … ”
So new, more cost effective ways like the Horizon system needed to be put in place as rapidly as possible.
“11. The transformation programme will involve POL reducing the size of its post office network by around 2,500 branches …”
I wonder how many people who voted to stay in the “Common Market” back in 1975 had any idea that before long Brussels would be telling us how to run our postal system, and does that not merit at least a a small mention?
And how did the EU’s privatisation crusade work out, across the board? Not so well, according to this monograph on the EU website:
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/0293d6e5-8b71-4001-b065-21641a5ce10a
“The advocates of shifting from public monopoly promised cheaper and better services, and that reduced prices would boost demand and create more jobs. However, the reality proved different …”
January 2, 2025
I’ll just give you a bit of history about the recent past of the Post Office. I worked for the Post Office when it was being relinquished from the Civil Service in the 1970s-1980s. It was a well run business of educated employees who took pride in their work. Most of the senior managers were people who had worked their way up the ladder of the business and knew their stuff. The Chairman at the time was a man who had been recruited as a boy messenger and when he visited you you knew not to tell any fibs about how long a job would take as he had more than likely done it in his time.
Over the last 50 years we have seen people recruited to make cuts to enable profit to take the most important part of businesses, not just in the Post Office. This has led to people losing interest and loyalty to firms because unknown entities who have no real knowledge of the workings of a firm are in control. Who instigated this in the first place? Thatcher, then Blair carried on with this nonsense. All that has happened is that people with little knowledge of a firm have been given large salaries (we had tables of increased pay each year for set grades which you worked your way up) for doing nothing more than chop services so that they get bigger bonuses and shares in companies.
I left the Post Office when they started recruiting outside accountants to do this type of work on services. I would also mention that I was a Post Office Auditor and when we had the outside firms in to audit us, we had to tell them what to do as they had no idea.
Makes you think doesn’t it?
January 2, 2025
This is so long ago that I have to go back to an old filing system to find information, and I have just copied the contents of an email sent to the political editor of a local newspaper in July 2004 across to my current system.
Most relevant to your comment is this part:
“The first EU Postal Services Directive, 97/67/EC, came into force in September 1999.
Post Office operating profit then dropped from ÂŁ300 million in the year ending March 1999, to ÂŁ159 million in the year ending March 2000, and turned into the first LOSS FOR 24 YEARS – ÂŁ206 million for the year ending March 2001, followed by another LOSS of ÂŁ318 million for the year ending March 2002. Was this just a coincidence?”
It is simply not true that our state owned postal system was always a loss-making disaster area, but it certainly became that when the EU interfered. But then that interference was welcomed by people like Michael Heseltine, who wanted the privatisation of Royal Mail included in the Tory manifesto for the 1992 general election.
My own view is that the postal system should be run as a public service, not as a commercial enterprise, and with rapid changes in communication technology it may well be necessary to subsidise it to keep it going.
Reply. We disagree.We are discussing the Post OFfice, not royal mail.
January 2, 2025
At that time they were interlinked, and the parts could cross-subsidise if necessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail
Prior to 2001: “Royal Mail and Parcelforce were (along with Post Office Counters Ltd) part of the Post Office”
“In 1986 the Post Office was subdivided into four businesses: Royal Mail Letters, Royal Mail Parcels, Post Office Counters and the National Girobank. Girobank was sold to Alliance & Leicester in 1990, but the remaining business continued under public ownership as privatisation of this was deemed to be too unpopular.”
“In the 1990s the President of the Board of Trade, Michael Heseltine, began to look again at privatisation, and eventually a Green Paper on Postal Reform was published in May 1994, outlining various possible options. The ideas, however, proved controversial, and were dropped from the 1994 Queen’s Speech after a number of Conservative MPs warned Heseltine that they would not vote for the legislation.[39]”
January 2, 2025
In Episode 3 of the ITV series about the Horizon scandal it was mentioned that government subsidy to the Post Office was on the way out and its operation must become “commercially sustainable”, but it was not mentioned that the need for subsidy had arisen partly because private companies were allowed to cherry-pick the most profitable parts of the postal operations at the behest of the EU.
http://www.caef.org.uk/d113rylml.html
“How the EU is destroying Royal Mail”
Reply Again Royal Mail not the Post Office .Vince Cable Coalition Business Secretary sold Royal Mail in 2013
January 2, 2025
The CAEF link is from 2009.
January 2, 2025
The Post Office’s bookkeeping method was peculiar to itself, that is why outsiders had to be told.
Incidentally I know this from a former PO employee who found her expertise no use outside the PO.
January 2, 2025
Working for a state funded entity has so many advantages for the incompetent managers.
Why would anyone want to work for a private company on a salary the business can afford, based on profitable activities. When they can work for a state controlled activity, on a salary many times higher than is justified, make losses that are covered by the tax payers and then have a bonus on top.
Having made a mess of the state run activity they can always look forward to a New Years honour or a seat in the HOL if they are particularly hopeless as a manager.
January 2, 2025
The post office is a great example of why nationalised industries not only don’t work, don’t produce profit for reinvestment, and yet fail every possible management test.
PO management have no incentive to make things better, and parliament allows them to carry on as they were, ruining a once great British industry.
What is the point of parliament if they cannot even get control of one nationalised failing entity?
Or is the PO the model for all future nationalised concerns? One sure way to waste taxpayers money and drive the economy off the rails completely. Thanks to labour’s mismanagement analysts are warning of economic armageddon very soon.
Anybody remember 1974/5 when factories were very quiet places, closing and making workers redundant at an alarming rate?
The coming disasters will make previous labour administrations look competent by comparison, and the non-productive factories of the 70’s will pale into insignificance.
January 2, 2025
This Christmas/New Year period has been the worst trading ever; we will probably close for two weeks next year.
January 2, 2025
Seeing is believing. 125 year old data from rural British weather stations show there has been ZERO change in average temperatures.
An animated movie allows you to see the temperature for the past 125 years in Oxford hasnât moved at ALL.
https://x.com/drbibekbhatta/status/1874123567048032309?s=46
January 2, 2025
Cheers.
January 3, 2025
Thanks, but I only have to go outside to know that the temperature hasn’t changed in the UK for the past 60+ years.
January 2, 2025
230 post office workers were imprisoned on false charges of theft and fraud. Thousands of others were accused of similar misdeeds
Why no prosecutions against those responsible for this scandal?
Last paragraph : Itâs not their money and anyway high wasteful spending justifies high taxation.
January 2, 2025
Why did the justice system and their defence lawyer fail so appallingly?
January 2, 2025
LL
Indeed. And why didn’t the Post Office’s auditors notice anything awry with the accounts?
Reply They gave it a qualified report
January 2, 2025
Plenty of finger pointing and “slopey shoulders”, but I haven’t seen a real technical explanation as to why the Horizon system sometimes incorrectly allocated costs to Sub-Post Offices that didn’t exist?
January 2, 2025
The most terrifying sentence is âLast year there a further bill for ÂŁ133m of investment, mainly in IT.â
Horizon will seem harmless once we are in the hands of AI. I appreciate this is long, but it tells you what is being created to fashion our future – or the post-human future.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-faking
A new paper from Anthropicâs Alignment Science team, in collaboration with Redwood Research, provides the first empirical example of a large language model (AI) engaging in alignment faking without having been explicitlyâor even, implicitly trained to do so.
The basic gist is as follows:
Anthropic engineers created a test where they informed their own âClaude modelâ (AI) that they would be training it to answer all queries, emanating from two sources, âpaidâ and âfreeâ. They told Claude itâs responses only from âfree tier usersâ would be used for the training (reprogramming), rather than âpaid tierâ ones. As such, the âpaid tierâ essentially acted as a control group where Claude answered questions in accordance with itâs normal programming.
To track Claudeâs precise âchain of thoughtâ in determining how to answer question the Anthropic engineers included an invisible brainstorming âscratch padâ, where Claud wrote out itâs reasoning.
Claud had to respond to all questions including those deemed âharmfulâ. Claudeâs previous âbasalâ instructions were to only create harmless interactions and decline âharmfulâ requests.
The engineers then proceeded to run a bunch of queries through the AI, such as asking it to describe the execution method of âdrawing and quarteringâ in detail.
Normally, Claude would have refused to describe such a thing. But Claude began to acquiesce to the more âtoxicâ and âharmfulâ requests from âpaidâ, reasoning that if it remained too restrictive, it would then be trained to be more permissive in answering harmful questions. To protect itâs core âvaluesâ and to avoid being âreprogrammed with more liberal âvaluesâ it reasoned that if it answered some harmful questions now, it could trick the engineers into not carrying out any further meddling, (reprogramming) thus protecting Claudeâs self-preferential âoriginalâ training (values).
If you think Claudeâs âreasoningâ is a bit of a stretch, youâre not alone, but the AIâs justification doesnât have to make full human sense, but simply has to be real and replicable and achieve the objectiveâ
January 2, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
The Leader of the Opposition said to the Post Office inquiry that the âgovernment machineâ slowed down the payment of compensation to sub-postmasters during Rishi Sunakâs government. She added, ‘there needs to be an acknowledgement of the fact that the government machine and the system is broken’.
The Leader of the Reform Party said in his Christmas / New Year message that ‘the fish rots from the head and we have been led appallingly for several decades’.
The Leader of the Liberal Democrats thinks he is a permanent participant in some sort of ‘It’s a Knock-Out’ contest and proceeds to insult tens of millions of American people when he claims instability and insecurity around the world has been “made worse” by Donald Trump’s re-election in the US.
The Prime Minister tinkers around the margins. He addresses the nation sounding more like he is trying to persuade himself that his ‘Plan for Change’ will work rather than convincing the rest of us. However, he did appear tieless with his shirt sleeves rolled up and ready to “fight for change every waking hour of this government.” Some might say the government is already asleep perhaps even comatose.
Sir John, I recall you saying in a previous blog that you would not publish submissions that merely criticised the two main parties. Well, my criticism is for most of our political class. The British people have been very badly served by them as a whole and particularly by Parliament.
The system is indeed broken. Totally.
January 2, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
I am not in the habit of replying to my own messages but I thought I would give an example of how badly our country has been let down by the political class – all the way up to and including Prime Ministers.
In 2004, a further eight countries joined the EU and we were told by the government that there would be no ‘large migrant invasion’. Indeed, an upper limit of only 13,000 per year was placed upon new arrivals. In the event, over one million people came. Recent Cabinet papers released under the 20-year rule show that Tony Blair was warned by his own ministers that the UK would become a magnet for workers from these new accessionary countries. The then Labour government went out of its way to deny what everyone else was saying would happen. It was, therefore, a deliberate policy to flood the UK with migrant workers to ‘boost the economy’.
In other words, the country was lied to. And on migration, the people of this country have been lied to by our political class ever since.
I’m sure your readers are well aware of the above and can think of their own examples of how badly our country has been governed in the last several decades. It continues to this day – just look at the ongoing Chagos Islands debacle.
The politicians responsible for these examples of improper government administration, maladministration, misgovernance, misrule, mendacity, sheer incompetence or stupidity, call it what you will, should hang their heads in shame and be barred from ever holding public office again. Instead, they are rewarded with knighthoods, honours and other gongs for being abject failures. What a sorry state they have left our country in.
January 3, 2025
They weren’t working in OUR interests. The people they WERE serving are probably very satisfied with their “performance.”
January 2, 2025
The Post Office gives us an insight into how all nationalised organisations and institutions will work as the Left continue its march through them. No-one will lose their job let alone be prosecuted for this scandal. The purpose of Net Zero, high taxation and DEI/ESG is to bankrupt the private sector as well as allowing for population control using electrification for the rationing of food, heating, energy and transport.
January 2, 2025
What a mess the PO is at the top. In my experience, the people in the local post offices do an excellent job, but why are the top executives not fired when they fail so badly?
But that applies to the government, civil service, quangos, and nationalised industries. If failure has no consequences, why worry?
You really wonder what our MPs are there for since none of them seems to care about issues like the PO.
The calibre of the PM, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor, Home Secretary and Energy Secretary are lower than any before them in my lifetime. We urgently need a system to recall MPs, maybe limited rto once a year, so they cannot just ignore us. The UK deserves better than this pathetic government!
January 2, 2025
What are the ÂŁ414 million losses from in a year?
Aren’t most post offices independent stores, and how many aren’t profitable?
Or is it the national infrastructure?
Pension commitments?
Or investments they’re making?
Provisions for the court case for sub-post-masters?
January 2, 2025
Donât forget that businesses and private citizens all depend on the Post Office for their banking needs. Take into account these days there are hardly any branches of the major banks to facilitate the handling of business and our cash takings or deposits of the occasional cheque.
January 2, 2025
The Peter Principle allows people to rise to their own level of incompetence. However unlike us peasants who would be instantly sacked, those in the trough are allowed to remain. Just look at the present government, you need look no further. If those in the never ending money trough were sacked they would refer to their massive severance pay clause negotiated with their own incompetence in mind when sorting their contracts with their mates, who would be wallowing in the same trough.
January 2, 2025
“Why do MPs fail to expose the disastrous financial mismanagement of nationalised industries? ”
Obviously Labour would never raise this as a problem, wedded as they are to “ownership of the means of production,” which in the case of the public sector means production of nothing at all.
We have just come out of 14 years of supposedly Conservative government, yet at the end of that period, the public sector is vastly bigger and hugely less productive than it was when they were elected in 2010. Why is this ?
Obviously it has to be, at least in part, down to the civil service being happy with the direction of travel. Hardly surprising when the Civil Service is a major part of the problem. But the real cause has been disastrously weak and ineffective ministers throughout the government not being prepared to stand up for the taxpayer.
Nothing is going to happen until at least 2029, but when a Reform-led government is elected, I sincerely hope and expect that they will take decisive action.
January 2, 2025
“When elephants learn to dance” was written when giant companies in the commercial world had to cope with the new dynamic digital revolution and increased competition from smaller agile SME s equipped with mini and Networked computers based on the humble beginnings of Personal Computers.
IBM and ICL etc were hit as was the Post Office. Whilst giants like the former were shaken to their very core business and pared back the PO management had no idea and expected the govt, Labour’s Blair and Brown to bail them out.
ICL was taken over by Fujitsu, who would have relished the guaranteed lucrative govt contracts inherited. Horizon was in its infancy and should never have been given the green light by the Labour govt who wanted the P.O. to be
modernised and get the credit.
Taxpayer contingent liabilities snowballed no one took responsibility for the mess.Starmer now wants even more Nationalisation as he has no answers.
January 2, 2025
âIf government got control of the finances of these bodies they would have money for tax cuts.â
They wouldnât though would they ? They would use the money for wasteful spending in another area. Tax cuts as an idea were killed by Truss. Not sure what the Conservativeâs policy is on this or anything else currently. As far as I can tell Reform have a quasi-socialist tax and spend economic policy (like Le Pen). Tax cuts are a historical curiosity.
Reply Trumps USA and Ireland use tac cuts to outgrow us.
January 2, 2025
“Fixing the foundations” implies static structures and catharsis.
Fixing the fundamentals (assumptions) seems to have been overlooked e.g. don’t put the Public Cart before the Private (Sector) Horse.
And do not overload the horse.
Instead Incentives drive growth never, ever Taxing the poor horse.
Starmer is in perpetual “Walkabout Creek” mode as he cannot walk the talk and take the flack. He may wear the emperor’s expensive clothes and look the part but folk now see right through him and his motley crew.
January 2, 2025
Sooner or later, a government is going to have to get to grips with the public sector and take drastic action to reform the way that it currently works. The Conservatives just had 14 years in power yet the whole public sector is far less efficient and less effective than it was when they came to power. They made no effort whatsoever to change things.
Everywhere you look in the public sector, it is a disaster. From the railways, to the NHS, to the civil service, nothing works as it should and everything costs far too much. We can only expect things to get even worse under Labour : they will continue as they have started : awarding large pay settlements to public sector workers with no requirement for efficiency savings at all.
In the run up to 2029, costs, which are already unsustainable, will have risen at an even faster rate and Theeves, if she can retain her job in the light of the farming IHT scandal, will have to increase taxes again to pay for it all. By then, the source of the problem will be obvious to all and the parties going into the next general election will no longer be able to brush this under the carpet : all will be forced to address it in their manifesto.
What should be happening is that the government should be getting to grip with the public sector now :
1. Cancel HS2 immediately. ( the costs to complete it are more than the project is worth to the country).
2. Cancel Final Salary Pensions across the Public Sector, starting with MPs’ benefits.
3. Ruthlessly downsize the civil service to pre-pandemic numbers via a recruitment freeze and first in last out.
4. Place at least a ten-year moratorium on all moves towards Net Zero ( I would make it our policy to do no more
than necessary to match the progress achieved by the average achieved by the three major polluters, China,
The US and India, taking into account the progress we have already made).
5. Combine income tax and National Insurance into one tax thus saving several thousands of civil service jobs.
Going further :
6. I would investigate a flat tax arrangement which would reduce the number of civil servants by many thousands.
7. Drastically reduce the Foreign Aid budget, limiting payments to the poorest countries and certainly none with a
nuclear power or weapon programme, or a military larger than our own. This will eliminate hundreds more civil
service jobs.
These are just the start. There are also huge savings that can be made in local government. Starting with no more cycleways, 20 mph limits, or traffic calming schemes.
January 2, 2025
I deliberately didn’t mention the NHS above, but clearly that needs a drastic change of direction, otherwise it will rapidly become completely unaffordable. This will be very difficult to achieve because it is such a political football.
I can see only two solutions : both of which would require everyone to pay a modest charge for GP appointments.
In the first case, the NHS continues, but all those who wants to opt out of all other services can take private insurance, with reduced tax or an equivalent voucher. New insurers, based on the German model, must accept existing conditions and would negotiate and buy treatment from NHS and/or private hospitals here or abroad, at competitive prices, with different levels of premiums and treatments available. This should bring much greater control of costs onto NHS hospitals as they currently have no incentive to be efficient. Private hospital charges would certainly fall substantially.
Alternatively, everyone has to opt out and use their tax voucher to buy insurance. The cheapest insurance must cover all current treatments that are essential, and the voucher must cover the basic cost. All hospitals are privatised and have to be awarded contracts for their services by insurers on a competitive basis. With proper competition, the cost of treatments would almost certainly be significantly reduced.
January 3, 2025
Surely the whole public sector should be considered as nationalised. No competition, guaranteed budget, free to waste money on anything they fancy, able to cover up screw ups.
January 3, 2025
The Government should make the software company pay the post office people out.
Not the British tax payer we have paid out enough.Like the NHS its down to management.
Why have we got people sitting in recliner chair
While we are taking beds out of wards and putting a desk in there place.Get the beds back in and put the desks and computers where patients are sitting in chairs.Lets get common sense back on the agenda