Alex Salmond and the Royal Mail

So in his speech today Alex Salmond said that after independence he would return the Royal Mail to public ownership. Now I make no apology here for being a philately geek as this is where the issues arise from what Alex has said in such a blasé manner.

First up there is the name, he would have no powers over the Royal Mail. The only postal service in the World that does not need to use the nation's name in its title is that of the United Kingdom as in 1840 they were the first to offer a universal set price postal service. Every other nation from the USA to South Sudan has to have the name of the country in its postal service name and on its stamps.

I have no qualms about Alex salmond saying he would restore a public postal service, but I do when he says that it would be the Royal Mail.

However, on the subject of a public postal service, does that mean that the franchised counters out to grocery stores or other shops in our rural communities would also be brought back into public ownership and therefore into a custom state run enterprise. You see if Alex truly means that all units of the Scottish Mail Service are to be public we cannot have rural post services run in the local shop. Nor can we have grocers delivery groceries and mail as an all in one service. You see the post service has not been entirely publicly owned for some time. Sometimes the franchised counters do not live up to expectations or occasionally the store into which they have been franchised run into difficulty. Then the Royal Mail has had to find some alternative arrangement, and this has not always been immediate, nor it is always fit for the purpose that those locals would like to expect, initially.

Then we have the matter that Alex Salmond's post service would have to operate outside of the UK. People will know that the cost of posting to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man is the same as to the UK. But these are crown dependencies. What Alex Salmond is wanting is a fully independent Scotland within the framework of  the UK.

While in the UK to post a letter up to 100g currently costs 60p first class and 50p second class. If I wanted to post something from Londonderry to Letterkenny, it would cost 88p minimum (up to 10g) but rise to £2.38 for between 90 and 100g. This is because Ireland counts as being in the EU. I know of people close to the border who have family in Northern Ireland who will order to the Northern Irish address as it is cheaper by quite some way.

Independence and the mail will have an affect on Scottish jobs.

Amazons largest fulfillment centre is in Dunfermline. But with increased mail costs to the rest of the UK will it be economically viable to keep both the one there and the one at Gourock? Probably not. So they will probably close the Gourock centre and scale down the one at Dunfermline. The same applies to other distribution networks that have based themselves in Scotland because of the space. With increased postage as shown above being quite steep for even small items the cost of distribution by mail order would mean a scaling back of these type of industries. That would mean a lot of lost jobs in the central belt where the M8, M9 and M80 triangle have prided themselves in becoming a distribution hub.

Independence would affect these jobs, these industries. Therefore is not enough for Alex Salmond to merely say that under independence the Royal Mail will be returned to public hands. Under independence mail will cost a lot more to send outwith Scotland and that has an impact on the cost of running companies and on people's jobs.

The Royal Mail is an essential service to people all across the UK. But under independence 5.25 million of those citizens will find it has an impact on them, the work they do, keeping in touch with family and friends and maybe even their job. People in the borders will be able to get around this, they'll use the address of their family or friends in Carlisle or Berwick to order stuff from English based firms. You don't believe this. This already happens with people from the Republic ordering stuff from UK companies to their f&f in Derry/Londonderry, Newry or Enniskillen.

There are more questions that Alex and his SNP team have to answer about postal services under an independent Scotland, because this is another area where we are Better Together.

The countdown has finally begun

So now I know what I'll be doing on the day before my 45th Birthday.


Yes today it has been revealed that the last day that I am 44 is also going to be Referendum Day.

On the day I turned 40 I was interviewing Nick Clegg ahead of Liberal Democrat federal party conference on the day I turn 45 I shall probably be exhausted and most likely at a count. At least there is the weekend to celebrate hopefully not just my birthday and the boss's wedding anniversary (also the day after) but I trust that the people of Scotland will know that they are better together and not some separate identity.

I've yet to see what that other politician with a link to Linlithgow will do should the raison d'être of his whole political identity falls apart. At least as a Liberal Democrat while I recognise the rights of individuals to self determination, and I accept that there are some in my own party who support the independence line of this, my political identity goes beyond a decision on whether we should declare independence or not. I joined a party that was set up for fairness for all.

To build a strong economy and a fair society you need leaders who will honest and open about the situation that you are in. Sadly the SNP, even with a former energy economist as leader, believe that the price of oil can only reach its maximum potential and all will be well for an independent Scotland. Sadly Big Eck's 'long walk to freedom' has meant that he and the SNP government have taken their eyes off other things while their eyes are focused on cloud cuckoo land.

I know what it means to be liberal and that will apply no matter what the outcome in 2014, do the SNP have any idea what it means to be pro-Scottish and part of the UK if they lose on that day. The Lib Dems are already talking about what will come after when the people of Scotland speak and are determined to bring more powers to Scotland within a Federal UK, we have 545 days from now the tell the people of Scotland why that is better for them than the uncertainty of so much from going alone.

BSD better buck up their online strategy

 I was rather horrified earlier to read this line from the Daily Telegraph coverage of the Better Together (campaign against Scottish Independence) launch today.

"The campaign has brought in Blue State Digital, the US political experts who ran President Barack Obama's web campaigns, to build a website and oversee its online strategy."

The reason being that throughout most of the Yes to AV campaign whenever Blue State Digital were mentioned it was often followed by the phrase "forgive me for swearing".

I have no doubt that they are very good at running US nationwide campaigns but when it came down to the dynamics of the recent yes campaign they failed miserably to adjust to the requirements of UK based campaigns. Indeed throughout the whole campaign despite me mentioning it from when I first got sight of their software it was impossible to search using any Northern Irish postcode. This is a common enough error in a lot of postcode based software, but one that I always checked on updates of the software I've used in any job that requires it.

But it was worse than that. Trying to develop delivery walks, or even to access the data to make the telephone campaign was incredibly difficult and took far too long to sort out when the issues were raised. Indeed issues were usually within hours of the latest update and took weeks to rectify if at all.

Therefore to have them oversee the online strategy terrifies me. I'm hoping the chain to get stuff updated online isn't as cumbersome as the Yes 2 AV leadership made things. I hope that rebuttals can get out there swiftly when need and leading the debate rather than constantly rebutting is the name of the game, taking Alex Salmond into areas that he isn't willing to have looked at too closely should be the battle ground.

For example over the weekend Joan McAlpine claimed "Scotland's future should be in Scotland's hands. We have 8.4% of UK population but contribute 9.6% of UK taxes." so in other words being part of the UK makes Scotland better off than the rest. So how is this plus the giving back with the Barnett formula of more per capita a keeping down of the Scots?