Thatcherite Britain Returns

Stubborn, suicidal union versus clueless, stoic management, backed by a Thatcherite Government.

Sounds like the 1980s? Nope, welcome to Britain 2009. In the face of multiple strikes which to be frank have seemed to have made no difference to an already sporadic service, Royal Mail's Golden Boy multi-million pound management team came up with a brilliant idea which will really solve the problem. Hire 30,000 temporary staff.

Well no doubt the Government are happy on two counts - 1) their stoic Thatcherite stance in the face of leftie Unionism is holding steady and 2) 30,000 off the dole queue will do no end of good to the tragic unemployment figures. It could have been a plan from the Iron Lady herself. But it is her deputy - Lord Mandelson who plays this Iron Lady. Calling the strike suicidal, he wears the mantle of free market capitalist well, even down to saying he has agreed to arbitration when the Union says he hasn't. Perhaps the letter telling them so was in in the post.

It's a really pathetic situation. All across Europe, the old public owned postal behemoths have largely carried on functioning, but for us we have a combination of bright ideas to sell off the profitable bit and leave the millstone around the ever welcoming taxpayers' necks. As Sir Howard Davies said of us all recently, we have no idea of how bad our crisis is and sure enough, as our ever generous cheque book keeps on paying up, we have no idea how much such stupidity will cost us in the future.

Mandelson loves playing God. He loves sucking up to rich Adonis's in the vain hope he can be one. But this has been rank stupidity after daft management. It stems simply from appointing management who have nothing to lose, because when matched with Union leaders who equally have nothing to lose, it is a game of chicken where neither party will turn as neither have a vested interest. In between stands a large workforce who are going to get royally shafted because they think everyone has their best interest at heart.

It's Thatcher's 80s all over again. Substitute Leighton and Crozier for Ian McGregor and Mandelson for Thatcher and you wouldn't know the difference but for the hairstyles. Meanwhile, unlike a homegrown steel and coal industry, every single person depends on the postal service. This is not suicidal, it's downright needless and stupid.