Wow! £3.5bn from the sale of shares and a £10bn pension liability over the next few years. Do the discounted cash flow and you'll see more political dogma than economic logic. What's worse they might already be trying to exploit their position.
I understand that significant and potentially costly changes being made by Royal Mail with effect from 4th November 2013. Basically charities receive a rebate on all freepost envelopes that are returned with a stamp (often 50% of a dm programme)
Apparently Royal Mail have informed Valldata that from 4th November new Business Reply Envelopes must be used with new barcodes and that any mail received in the current envelopes after 4th November will not be admissible for rebate.
Here's the catch 22. All new envelopes need to be submitted and approved by Royal Mail but you can't submit them until the 4th November as the barcode generator will not be available until then!
Valldata and others are continuing to lobby hard on behalf of all their clients to secure an overlap period where existing BRE’s will continue to qualify for the rebate. Because if for example your Christmas mailing has already been produced with the existing envelopes you can expect a cost of £100s if not £000s in additional postage.
This is a difficult and grossly unfair situation and we all need to do something to challenge this. In view of the current media hype around Royal Mail shares I wonder if this would be something that they wouldn’t want the sector bringing to the attention of the general public? What do you think?
