Summary
The UK government has approved Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský’s £3.6bn takeover of International Distribution Services (IDS), Royal Mail’s parent company, after a national security review.
It marks the first foreign ownership in Royal Mail’s 508-year history. The government retains a “golden share” to protect the postal service’s obligations, branding, and UK-based operations.
The deal includes commitments to maintain the universal service, worker protections, and delivery performance.
While seen as a pivotal moment for Royal Mail’s future, scrutiny persists over Křetínský’s ties to Russian energy and controversial business dealings.
Oh dear, the Czech is in the mail.
What an incredibly stupid decision.
And the orange shit gibbon is going to try to do the same thing for no reason.
Yeah shit is gonna get sold and everything will go to shit over here. This is Labour though, the liberal party, doing this over in England. Just goes to show you what neoliberalism, regardless of particular party, will eventually do. Privatize privatize privatize.
Unfortunately, modern Labour are centrist, much like the US Democrats, so we see rather a lot of surprisingly right-leaning decisions from what ought to be a left-leaning party. “Liberal” isn’t a completely accurate term for them these days.
We also have a third party called “Liberal Democrats” who were positioned in that centrist position until Labour moved right and stole it from them. Now they still try to sit between, pleasing hardly anyone.
When there was a left-leaning leader running the Labour party a few years ago, much panic ensued among the rich and powerful, and dirty tricks and smear campaigns were undertaken to get him as far out of the way as possible.
It probably didn’t help that he didn’t particularly want to be PM, but he was the only man who would do it.
Edit: Reworded for accuracy.
centrist,
Not centrist: conservative. Liberals only invented that label so they could call themselves something other than conservative.
Thanks for the extra information for those less informed about polítics there. It really is eye opening how few people understand the positions of Labour and US Democrats on the political spectrum. Right of center and moving further right is spot on.
The Royal Mail was privatized already in 2013 by a Tory government, this is just a sale between two private entities.
Ah, I was wondering how will lemmy make sure to talk about trump after the elections are over?
Yeah, right, by mentioning him and upvoting any mentioning of him in any sub on any topic.
This is a thread about UK and Czechia. Get the hell out with your American politics. Shove it faaaar up your ass and then walk like that till you reach reddit.
Oh yeah. Privatisation is always better for the taxpayer. I mean, all those toll roads, managed by corporations. The value taxpayers get, paying for roads, that have been paid off a hundred times over, as they keep paying that private corporate tax. Every day. Hell yeah!
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but Royal Mail was privatised a decade ago. It was floated on the stock market back in late 2013 (for around £2b, and despite objections from 96% of staff), and the government let go of their 30% stake in 2015. Křetínský was a big shareholder even then.
Dude, it’s a great idea!! Just look at Thames Water and the privatization of water utilities. It’s fantastic!!
Nice of them to let Putin have access to everything going through the UK post.
The government have most-likely already given America access to all our internet traffic, or at least gives them it on request. Putin is going to cause me less of an issue that America.
You do know who just got elected president of the U.S., right? And his relationship with Putin?
Surely a foreign entity controlling your country’s infrastructure or services is not that desirable.
It is if your main goal is to please billionaire oligarchs.
this is a labour government?!
It’s a “Labour” government, featuring the corpse of the Labour Party haunted by the ghost of Margaret Thatcher.
Basic mail plan: 35£ per month to receive mail once a week.
Silver mail plan: 50£ per month to receive mail every day.
Gold mail plan: 100£ per month to receive mail every day and have your deliveries prioritised first with the postman bowing while calling you “Mi’Lord”.
Mail used to come 12 times a day in London: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24089/victorian-mail-delivery-12-times-each-day
Is the free plan once a fortnight with even more marketing pamphlets thrown through the door?
You gotta prove you red the publicities though.
How on earth did this get approved by labour? This is crazy! They were pushing for publicly owned energy company as part of their manifesto and now this? Well this is going to go down even steeper hill
I think I severely underestimated Brits’ self-loathing.🤔
This will no doubt go poorly but hey, when a government experiment goes poorly, what choice do you have.
