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Friday, April 6, 2007 |
I have been waiting for more than ten days now for an envelope from England. The same mailing was received in the US, India, Japan and Australia several days ago. And it's just normal mail that goes through the letter box. I live close to Schiphol where airmail is received from Britain and could easily be sluiced to our until now properly functioning TNT (our former Royal Dutch mail service). Mail from England under 50 grams is indeed delivered by TNT within 2 to 3 days.
But anything over 50 grams is delivered 'as much as possible' by the Royal Mail (Britain) subsidiary in Holland: RM Netherlands (what do they do in case they deem it 'not possible'?). So this kind of mail (including parcels) is transported from Schiphol to RM's sorting centre at The Hague. That's about 45 km away from Schiphol/Amsterdam. Then the fun starts. Where our good old TNT has a large infrastructure and thousands of postmen, RM has ... well I don't really know. Delivery seeems to be outsourced to FlexiPartner. On their picture I can see six postmen already. I hope they have more of these brave boys who are going to conquer the Netherlands.
So how do they get my mail back all those 45 km to Amsterdam? Well, they do that very, very slowly or not al all (click the ad away).
What is the cause of all this? It's privatisation.
Privatisation, deregulation or liberation are just other words for chaos.
SupplyDemandChain: "The European express and parcels industry is set to undergo drastic transition as globalization, deregulation of the postal sector, the wave of mergers and alliances, and booming trade and e-commerce work to transform the industry, according to a report just published by independent market analyst Datamonitor."
All over Europe postal services were partially and will soon be completely liberalised. This means that soon also airmail letters under 50 grams will receive the RM Netherlands treatment.
Liberalisation means that the monopolies of Royal Mail companies all over Europe will disappear and any nut with a rickety minivan can start his own mail service. All these little mail firms will be able to provide very cheap services as they don't have the costly infrastructure and personnel larger companies have. But wait a minute, cheap? How can they deliver cheap if they have to take a letter from England arriving at Schiphol, first to The Hague, then back again to one address in Amsterdam they have great difficulty in finding, and which would cost them more than the one PoundSterling they would receive for the job. But there is a way out: you don't deliver the letter at all or you outsource delivery to a few students, OAPs or foreigners, who could take the letter with them when they happen to visit relatives in the neighbourhood of the delivery address.
So what happens is that due to this competition our good old TNT will have to lay off 6 to 7 thousand postmen. The same happens in Britain.
I have never seen such a splendid example of waste, downgrading and workforce destruction.
TNT will be allowed to offer its services in England and Royal Mail will be able to work in Holland. They will have to reduce their own workforce and service due to this competition and the void will be filled up by unreliable small firms. Result: an overall downshift in service and efficiency. After a few years many of those firms will have disappeared or merged into bigger companies. And each of these companies will need their own sorting centre, their own delivery fleet and workforce. So instead of one man delivering your post, you will get several of them, and everything will be delivered later than usual (if you are so lucky to receive your mail). Not really efficient. After some decades there will be a mail monopoly again.
11:45:06 AM 
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YNet: "US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the United States was not planning to release the five Iranians arrested in January in a raid on the Iranian consulate's office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil.
Iranian media reported Wednesday that an Iranian official would be allowed to meet with the five detainees, who according to the authorities serve as diplomats."
The Bush administration is essentially racist, hypocritical and unethical.
10:56:28 AM
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AlterNet: "Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist - it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father.
BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a dirty offshore bank that then-President Ronald Reagan's Central Intelligence Agency used to run guns to Hussein, finance Osama bin Laden, move money in the illegal Iran-Contra operation and carry out other 'agency' black ops. The Bushes also benefited privately; one of the bank's largest Saudi investors helped bail out George W. Bush's troubled oil investments."
10:50:40 AM
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Guardian: "Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions of the world."
10:47:10 AM
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IHT: "Poland's military mission in Iraq may take a more 'offensive' character, the president said Thursday.
Polish military commanders in Iraq say their troops, which have been concentrating on rebuilding missions and security patrols, have come under increasing insurgent attacks.
'Our base has recently come under frequent fire, and as a result there may be a need to change the character (of the mission) to a more offensive one,' President Lech Kaczynski said, adding that he was not considering sending more troops."
More offensive, like it was less offensive before?
BlackAnthem: "Polish Brig. Gen. Marek Tomaszycki assumed a dual role as commander of the Polish military contingent in Afghanistan and as one of CJTF-82's deputy commanders March 22."
NYTimes: "Thousands of fresh Western troops have flowed into Afghanistan since last year, seeking to counter the resurgent Taliban before an expected spring offensive. Many American units have been conducting sweeps and raids.
But here in Uruzgan Province, where the Taliban operate openly, a Dutch-led task force has mostly shunned combat. Its counterinsurgency tactics emphasize efforts to improve Afghan living conditions and self-governance, rather than hunting the Taliban's fighters. Bloodshed is out. Reconstruction, mentoring and diplomacy are in."
It is time for the Dutch troops to pull out as soon as possible.
10:44:00 AM
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