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Delivering the mail            27/1/13

 

Sir,

Mr Bruce’s letter regarding the Post Office’s Universal Obligation is a masterclass of illogical non-sequitur. His opening paragraph welcomes Mr MacNeil’s opposition to possible Post Office privatisation, but then adds that it “raises the obvious point that Mr MacNeil also has some questions to answer.”

Does it? I think Mr Bruce means that he would now like to ask our MP some questions.

His next paragraph is absurd, to say the least. He asks if the best bulwark against privatisation is the retention of a majority of MPs at Westminster who are opposed to that principle, and suggests that if all of Scotland's MPs were removed from Westminster, it would make privatisation more likely in England. The answer is that of course it would. However, what happened in England would no longer be Scotland’s problem or within its influence as Scotland would be an independent country controlling its own postal services and with no control over the internal affairs of any other foreign country, including England.

Of course the Universal Obligation which our MP wishes to defend at present covers the whole of the United Kingdom. After independence, if the Post Office in the rest of the United Kingdom were to be privatised, of course there is no likelihood of its respecting any Universal Obligation covering the furthest corners of what would, by then, be a foreign state. That would be a Scottish government's responsibility.

He goes on to say that, “Any Universal Obligation restricted to Scotland would be of very little use to the Western Isles - Whereas haulage contractors impose island surcharges, the Post Office does not. Turning Scotland and England into separate countries would throw away that benefit.”” Why would it? Why would the Post Office in an independent Scotland not retain the Universal Obligation as it has in the past? And, assuming it did, why would any Universal Obligation within an independent Scotland “be of very little use to the Western Isles?” Is he seriously suggesting that the government of an independent Scotland would respect any Universal Obligation on the mainland but on the Western Isles?

After the usual Labour Party remarks that a poor little country like us couldn’t possibly pay for a postal service which England graciously provides for us at the moment (like everything else, of course, we Scots apparently neither pay for nor contribute to any UK services), he suggests our MP is merely interested in putting out a press release. A well-known clichè containing the words “pot” and “black” springs to mind.

Stuart Rankin,

Ceann an t-Ob,

28a Callanish,

Lewis

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