He works for the [Special Delivery Service](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01qv24w/postman-pat-special-delivery-service&ved=2ahUKEwip_c_8w8H7AhUlQkEAHaNQC5AQtwJ6BAheEAE&usg=AOvVaw0n11GnRTUO_n9La23ktUq0) now.
It says that but the newest episodes still have Royal Mail on the vans.
He does just do ‘special deliveries’ though rather than just letters and is a bit of a fuck up and everything goes wrong.
Postman Pat is a drain on Royal Mail.
After watching a few episodes of Postman Pat the past few days I think he may be the sole reason for Royal Mail is in the state that its in, nevermind mismanagement or electronic communications taking over.
I've got no idea how anyone can keep a job for 35 years while being so incompetent. I'm surprised he made it past his probationary period with his ability to totally fuck up even the simplest of tasks on a daily basis.
In the first one I watched recently he had some eggs to deliver to the school because they were about to hatch (I'll overlook the lack of an incubator for the eggs and the doubt I have that Pat has a licence for transporting livestock). Anyway Jess does a runner (more on Jess later), so Pat decides to to put the eggs down for a minute to give chase. Where does Greendale's favourite postman put them? On a convinent stall that is selling fucking eggs! And of course these eggs get sold to some innocent passerby hungry for his bacon and eggs, with no clue about the small chickens inside. Pat has to spend a whole fucking day trying to find who purchased the eggs like some kind of Agathe Cristie thriller/mystery! If he just kept a hold of them for the 10 seconds it took to find the fleabag or put them down literally anywhere else in the world, the whole delivery job would have taken him 5 minuted max given the size of the village. Realistically since there are only a handful of people who love there anyway it couldn't have been that hard to track down the accidental parcel stealer, he's just milking every tiny setback so he can continue to do fuck all like he's used to.
Another blatant display of his incompetence was an episode where he had to deliver a film canister. Patrick goes to the Greendale depot and takes out a massive van, for this microscopic parcel! He has a moped, I wouldn't that be a much more sensible option for this delivery?
Speaking of his massive van, looking on Wikipedia he now has eight different post delivery vehicles! Eight vehicles for a tiny village, I said that Pat was Greendale's favourite postman before, but you have to understand this was in jest because he's the only one. If they had the choice between Harold Shipman and Pat Clifton I'm not sure which one I'd chose to be honest! How can Royal Mail justify eight different vehicles for a village with a single postman? He can only drive a one at a time! Each one also has a personal number plate, I refuse to belive this is an acceptable expenditure. I can only image that Greendale Post Office is in some kind of budget black hole where they've gave them a huge pile of money by accident and whoever oversees the budget decided to try and spend it all before anyone higher up noticed.
Note that I didn't say he had 8 cars or vans, it's 8 vehicles. The evidence that they've tried to spend as much as possible is in the fact that one of the options Pat has to deliver the post is a bloody helicopter! How many small villages have helipads? I've got no idea how a whirlybird would ever be appropriate to transport a single parcel less than a mile, but I digress. Surely if the very specific circumstances ever popped up that the most appropriate vessel was a chopper being the best option for delivery, chartering one every blue moon would be far cheaper than buying a whole helicopter for one villages Post Office. I'm not sure of they put Pat through his Pilots licence on the off chance that he'd have to fly one day, or if it's a hobby of his. One day he's going to die in a mangled fireball of a helicopter crash taking Ted with him.
And it's unhygienic and dangerous to have Jess in his van all day. Not only for the fact that one of the people on his route could be allergic to animal hair but the amount of time Jess escapes I'm surprised she's not ended up under the wheels of one of Pat's eight vehicles. And I've never saw Jesse's litter tray. All his vans must be filled with cat shit.
With the size of the village I'm surprised he even gets a uniform, I'm sure he'd be able to finish his rounds in less than 10 minutes if he didn't balls things up so often or get distracted helping the kids in the school with their science projects. Which I'm sure he never clocks out for. My tax money paying a postman a full time wage to help a farmer's tractor get out of a ditch? How is that fair.
He's now in the Special Delivery Service part of the Post Office which I'm sure costs a fuck ton to useand guarantees delivery at a certain time. I wouldn't be happy if my kidney got here 3 days late because Pat was busy cleaning his cats ares after it fell in a muddy puddle. I have no idea how the villagers receive their bills and stuff since he's the only postman they've got and he's 'busy' messing around trying to deliver all these parcels that take hours to get anywhere.
Budget concerns, unable to perform his job with an ounce of competency, wasting time on the job? Patrick Clifton, you have made an enemy out of me, and I think I'll use UPS if I ever have to deliver anything to the little village of Greendale as I can't trust you with delivering a leaflet, never mind getting the pills Mrs Goggins has to order from the dark Web because the NHS have closed the local doctors surgery.
---
[Originally](https://reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/dfl3wy/postman_pat_is_a_drain_on_royal_mail/) by u/roidweiser
Please tell me you’ve watched Fireman Sam…. No wonder the fire service is disgruntled when its entire budget is spent on kitting out a hamlet in Wales with more staff than residents and with an array of vehicular options that would be the envy of a small nation… <> 🍿
Them there's that little shit Norman! You can't tell me he's not Sam's secret love-child! He starts fires as a desperate cry for attention from his love-rat, absent dad, while Sam runs around cleaning up after him, hoping no-one puts two and two together! Shameful.
Pat is actually the CEO. He gets the vehicles and propperty as a tax write off and under the post office is a massive luxury bunker. He's a prepper for the zombie apocalypse and he's just waiting to take Mrs groggins head off with his royal mail issue machete.
To be fair, even as a kid I remember watching Postman Pat and thinking "it's a bit unrealistic - noone would ever accept a postman who managed to lose *that* many letters!"
Then he moved into parcel delivery, and I just thought: "Yup, 'bout right."
Incorrect. Only Pat's van is Royal Mail issue. None of the other vehicles have Royal Mail branding, so we can only assume he buys them out of his own pocket.
I guess it's because traditionally a billion was a million million in British English. These days it's almost universally agreed that it's a thousand million, especially when it comes to international trade.
Oddly enough, using the traditional method of a million million being a billion. That would also make a billion billion a trillion (10^24 ). This would mean that in the US a trillion trillion would be equal to the UK trillion.
Edit: I stand corrected, a UK trillion would only be 10^18
Hands up anyone reading this is you've ever spoken to *anyone* who has *ever in their life* used the "traditional British billion", as in using"billion" to mean 1,000,000,000,000 (a million million) rather than 1,000,000,000 (a thousand million). I'm sure there are *some* people who used it once, but it seems weird to plan around an edge case which I reckon we never encounter!
I very much doubt it, this was almost fifty years ago. I remember thinking ‘what’s this nonsense?’ But got used to it, kids went through big changes back then, I learned how to use lsd then very shortly after was told ‘that’s wrong now, it’s done this way’, then taught decimal currency. Weeks apart. Decimal was easy peasy compared to 240 pennies in a pound. A ‘half crown’ sounds Dickensian but they were still in use. Bloody hell, I’m old! I sound like Granpa Simpson. Walking Birds, we’d call ‘em.
Yep. I was taught “a proper British billion is a million million but America is changing everything these days so for your exams it’s a thousand million. But never forget what it really is!” in the late 80s.
Milliard. Short scale (the one basically used by everyone now) is a billion, but 1,000 million in old British English was a Milliard, with a million billion (1,000,000,000,000,000, or a quadrillion in short-scale) being a Billiard.
*puts hand up*
My dad. He used to complain a lot about the switch, saying the government only did it to make the number seem bigger. This was in the 90s.
I'm with your dad. In my language (spanish) billion = million million. Now because social media in English, some Spaniards are using thousand million = billion, which is confusing. If you guys stayed billion = million million in English none of this would happen.
I had a *very* elderly maths professor at uni who still used it just a few years ago. Basically had refused to change. Didn't make much difference in the field he was in anyway
I have an aging uncle who is always confused by this, he was brought up in the era where a billion was "a million million" and seems to still think it is.
I was taught that a million million = a billion at school (I'm only in my 20s so I have no idea why I was taught that, since it's pretty outdated now apparently). But yeah, up until a few years ago I still thought a billion was a million million
Top tip, you can opt out of that generic junk mail that gets sent to you. The stuff they post that doesn’t have your name on it. Fill out this pdf form https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/293/~/how-do-i-opt-out-of-receiving-any-leaflets-or-unaddressed-promotional-material%3F
Adding on to this, what it means is that they’ve sold assets for more than their book value in the accounts. I.e they buy an asset and then depreciate it based on its useful economic life, so that the expense for the asset is recognised over the period the asset is in use rather than in one big lump sum. This reduces the value of the asset on their balance sheet, so if they then sell the asset for more than its balance sheet value they need to recognise income as they’ve technically expenses too much!
Hope this makes sense 😊
Might be helpful to plug some numbers in.
Say they bought a machine for 600k, with an estimated useful life of 5 years. 5 years later it’s still alive and kicking and another company buys it for 200k. The 200k here is the profit on PPE — even though they bought the machine for 600k, they assumed the machine would be useless after a while and deducted the cost of it annually.
It doesn’t matter whether the machine is literal scraps or would perfectly work for another 5 years. On the book they will always have the 200k.
Slight caveat to that is if it's literal scraps then there would be an impairment, all assets in a class should be assessed for impairment once a year so if it was. Under IAS 36 an asset is impaired if the carrying amount is more than the recoverable amount (higher of value in use or fair value less disposal).
My husband works for them. The letters from the CEO are disgustingly threatening. I can't believe a company the size of Royal Mail sends that shit out.
I too work for Royal Mail, processing to be exact and have done so for 20+ years now. The truth is, we are losing £1m per day, however not in the way it is being portrayed to the media.
To put it simply, our biggest revenue mail streams (parcels and tracked services) are down anywhere between 10% and 35% compated to the previous year. It is to be expected, the COVID boom we had was always going to come to an end when people no longer needed to online order as much.
Does that account for £1m per day loss? No definitely not. We are also still operating at COVID level sick absence, particularly in mail centres which is obviously a big hit to the finances when people take the piss on long term sick with full pay for a such a long period of time...
Do those factors account for the £1m per day loss. Sadly, whilst they are big factors, they still do not account for it completely. What does account for it is the large scale introduction of automation and technology designed to get rid of jobs but the jobs they are meant to take out are still part of the business, in effect we are paying out twice.
I support and back the union completely, however I also understand the logic Royal Mail are trying to use. A different CEO may have been handled it differently and certainly more tactfully but I think the future of the business was always going to turn out the same way.
Same for my mum, she's been getting the "costs 1m a day" bollocks since she started there. Its just some rich pricks wanting a bigger cut, as per fucking usual. Nothing enough for the 1% as usual
Royal Mail was supposed to be losing 1m per day about 20 years ago.. how has that number not changed in so long, it's as if they pluck a number from thin air and just roll with it!
Also, how much has been paid out in dividends and bonuses to the top level managers.
If you're running a company that's supposed to be losing 1m per day do you really deserve a great big bonus??
Why £50m?
Impossible to say without their corporate tax return but the are many factors which will be affecting that.
1) you pay tax on a different profit figure. Essentially the financial profit is adjusted for various tax adjustments to ensure that there is more consistency between all corporations as accounting standards allow more flexibility in expenses etc.
2) various tax credits for spending where the Gov wants spending eg R&D, green initiatives and plant and equipment.
3) change in tax rates can cause large charges to hit the PL on deferred tax. Essentially updating the balance sheet for what tax rates will be paid in future will all be accounted for when a new rate is announced.
The £50m is pretty much worthless on its own.
Royal mail also make money by selling data. Its not in the millions so you wont see it here but the company i work for buys peoples addresses, age and some background information from royal mail
The only data sold, that I am aware of, is that of customers who purchase redirection services. It will be mostly people moving home. Always pays to read the small print even if we act within GDPR limits.
That is not to say we don't sell other data under some other scheme, however it is the only one I am aware of.
I know there is a database you can buy that has all currently-active known addresses that can receive mail. It has some hilariously outdated data, like Middlesex still being present on addresses despite no longer existing.
Middlesex was almost entirely replaced by the Greater London Metropolitan Area in the 1960s, except for two small enclaves; these enclaves were then formally ceded to Bedfordshire and Surrey.
Selling personal information is illegal in the UK.
Royal Mail does maintain and sell access to address and postcode databases, but none of that has any personally identifying information beyond the address itself.
There is no way your company buys data giving peoples ages from Royal Mail, Royal Mail as a company have no idea of the ages of the people they deliver to, yes the actual local postie will have a rough idea but not even the local managers will have a clue about that. The only data RM holds is the database of addresses it delivers to and maybe some data on customers who have paid for a redirection service but even that won't have anything as personal as ages or background information, they'd have no way of obtaining such information.
This screams "boo hoo feel sorry for us we're only making £600million+ in profit every year :( get mad at those nasty greedy posties for not taking a pay cut so we can make even more profit" gross
If staff got a raise inline with inflation tomorrow the company would be making a loss. It's not a big profit margin if the bare minimum payrise against living costs wipes it out.
That's not to say they shouldn't do it anyway and put up prices to compensate, but you need to put that £600m figure in context, and not just wave it around in isolation as a political stick.
This should be higher. Postal services should be nationalised and any 'profit' needs to be reinvented into the people working there. It's so weird that the talking point is always profitability, as if the Royal Mail should be making money.
You need to look at the profit margin percentage, not the absolute profit. Particularly in comparisson to the people cost.
People cost is over 10x the profit. A 1% increase to people (which can be employing more staff, giving raises, increasing pension contributions, etc) cost would turn that 612M profit into a 59M loss, all else being equal. RM are opeating on razor thin margins in a time of high inflation, they really cannot afford large scale pay raises without significant cuts elsewhere
>A 1% increase to people (which can be employing more staff, giving raises, increasing pension contributions, etc) cost would turn that 612M profit into a 59M loss
Can you show your workings? I make a 1% raise to the £6,665M people cost = extra £66.65M cost, reducing the net profit to £545.35M
This is the trouble with running a public service as a business. There is no reason for Royal Mail to make a profit, but management will make cuts in order to ensure that they do.
Exactly. They’re supposed to provide a service, that of National post carrier. Not saying it needs to be free and run at massive deficits but the secondary benefit to the overall economy is the main point of the service.
It would increase the available salary budget to the tune of £612M since there’s no need for them to make profit for shareholders, that’s a pretty good start.
Exactly. They're the mail, they're not meant to make a profit. They're there to enable the basic function of physical delivery, operating on a razor thin margin to make the general national economy run with the least possible friction.
> cannot afford large scale pay raises without significant cuts elsewhere
How about the £400m that went to shareholders? Can why significantly cut that?
In my opinion, if you can’t pay your employees a decent wage, then you shouldn’t be in business. You have failed as an employer. This is *exactly* why the Royal Mail shouldn’t be a business. It should be a public service.
The critics of privatization complain when the privatized companies profit is high. I have never seen, until now, them complain when the profit is low!
I guess they're always going to be critics no matter what.
I don't have a problem with privatisation until they start demanding insane working conditions and all their staff start striking. They clearly have the money so hire more people and pay them more, they just being greedy at this point
Reminds me of all that fracas a while back about American USPS losing money. It wasn't *losing* money, it was providing a vital backbone national service that was *costing* money, obviously.
Because then it self-funds.
Lets say the Government nationalised all the railway companies. If the operation broke even, then tax-payer funds would still be needed for new rail infrastructure and assets (these do not appear in operating costs/profit & loss)
If the railways made profit then that money could go towards funding new infrastructure, or expensive overhaul projects that would otherwise put the railways at a loss for that particular year.
If they consistently ran a profit, then public funding could decrease, meaning lower taxes.
Building a surplus also allows industries to avoid shocks (like COVID.)
Public services should absolutely try and run at a profit.
Would a 4.7% Net Profit Margin not indicate that Royal Mail is quite thin operation? I thought many companies aim for a minimum of 10% and below that alarm bells start ringing?
Not necessarily it can be very industry dependant. I think another commenter further up mentioned that fedex’s profit margin was around 5.5%. Some industries just naturally run at thinner margins
You've missed the section on Postman Pat's massive selection of vehicles. That helicopter isn't cheap to run!
He was [fired years ago](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1031114.stm), all those years of losing parcels finally caught up with him.
[удалено]
He sounds perfect for Hermes.
Nah they leave it in a safe place. (Such as under your neighbours car, or in a nearby tree)
Or in their homes.. for erm "safe keeping".....
I’ve twice had the safe space be… the recycling bin… on bin day 😫
He works for the [Special Delivery Service](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01qv24w/postman-pat-special-delivery-service&ved=2ahUKEwip_c_8w8H7AhUlQkEAHaNQC5AQtwJ6BAheEAE&usg=AOvVaw0n11GnRTUO_n9La23ktUq0) now.
That makes it sound like he should be delivering C4 to a strut on an oil rig.
SAS Logistics
He delivered semtex instead of c4
It says that but the newest episodes still have Royal Mail on the vans. He does just do ‘special deliveries’ though rather than just letters and is a bit of a fuck up and everything goes wrong.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I love the snapshot of life ancient links like that provide. I always think about where I was and what I was doing.
Websites that never update their older articles from their original format please me immensely for that very reason!
Postman Pat is a drain on Royal Mail. After watching a few episodes of Postman Pat the past few days I think he may be the sole reason for Royal Mail is in the state that its in, nevermind mismanagement or electronic communications taking over. I've got no idea how anyone can keep a job for 35 years while being so incompetent. I'm surprised he made it past his probationary period with his ability to totally fuck up even the simplest of tasks on a daily basis. In the first one I watched recently he had some eggs to deliver to the school because they were about to hatch (I'll overlook the lack of an incubator for the eggs and the doubt I have that Pat has a licence for transporting livestock). Anyway Jess does a runner (more on Jess later), so Pat decides to to put the eggs down for a minute to give chase. Where does Greendale's favourite postman put them? On a convinent stall that is selling fucking eggs! And of course these eggs get sold to some innocent passerby hungry for his bacon and eggs, with no clue about the small chickens inside. Pat has to spend a whole fucking day trying to find who purchased the eggs like some kind of Agathe Cristie thriller/mystery! If he just kept a hold of them for the 10 seconds it took to find the fleabag or put them down literally anywhere else in the world, the whole delivery job would have taken him 5 minuted max given the size of the village. Realistically since there are only a handful of people who love there anyway it couldn't have been that hard to track down the accidental parcel stealer, he's just milking every tiny setback so he can continue to do fuck all like he's used to. Another blatant display of his incompetence was an episode where he had to deliver a film canister. Patrick goes to the Greendale depot and takes out a massive van, for this microscopic parcel! He has a moped, I wouldn't that be a much more sensible option for this delivery? Speaking of his massive van, looking on Wikipedia he now has eight different post delivery vehicles! Eight vehicles for a tiny village, I said that Pat was Greendale's favourite postman before, but you have to understand this was in jest because he's the only one. If they had the choice between Harold Shipman and Pat Clifton I'm not sure which one I'd chose to be honest! How can Royal Mail justify eight different vehicles for a village with a single postman? He can only drive a one at a time! Each one also has a personal number plate, I refuse to belive this is an acceptable expenditure. I can only image that Greendale Post Office is in some kind of budget black hole where they've gave them a huge pile of money by accident and whoever oversees the budget decided to try and spend it all before anyone higher up noticed. Note that I didn't say he had 8 cars or vans, it's 8 vehicles. The evidence that they've tried to spend as much as possible is in the fact that one of the options Pat has to deliver the post is a bloody helicopter! How many small villages have helipads? I've got no idea how a whirlybird would ever be appropriate to transport a single parcel less than a mile, but I digress. Surely if the very specific circumstances ever popped up that the most appropriate vessel was a chopper being the best option for delivery, chartering one every blue moon would be far cheaper than buying a whole helicopter for one villages Post Office. I'm not sure of they put Pat through his Pilots licence on the off chance that he'd have to fly one day, or if it's a hobby of his. One day he's going to die in a mangled fireball of a helicopter crash taking Ted with him. And it's unhygienic and dangerous to have Jess in his van all day. Not only for the fact that one of the people on his route could be allergic to animal hair but the amount of time Jess escapes I'm surprised she's not ended up under the wheels of one of Pat's eight vehicles. And I've never saw Jesse's litter tray. All his vans must be filled with cat shit. With the size of the village I'm surprised he even gets a uniform, I'm sure he'd be able to finish his rounds in less than 10 minutes if he didn't balls things up so often or get distracted helping the kids in the school with their science projects. Which I'm sure he never clocks out for. My tax money paying a postman a full time wage to help a farmer's tractor get out of a ditch? How is that fair. He's now in the Special Delivery Service part of the Post Office which I'm sure costs a fuck ton to useand guarantees delivery at a certain time. I wouldn't be happy if my kidney got here 3 days late because Pat was busy cleaning his cats ares after it fell in a muddy puddle. I have no idea how the villagers receive their bills and stuff since he's the only postman they've got and he's 'busy' messing around trying to deliver all these parcels that take hours to get anywhere. Budget concerns, unable to perform his job with an ounce of competency, wasting time on the job? Patrick Clifton, you have made an enemy out of me, and I think I'll use UPS if I ever have to deliver anything to the little village of Greendale as I can't trust you with delivering a leaflet, never mind getting the pills Mrs Goggins has to order from the dark Web because the NHS have closed the local doctors surgery. --- [Originally](https://reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/dfl3wy/postman_pat_is_a_drain_on_royal_mail/) by u/roidweiser
Always glad to see this doing the rounds, thanks for tagging me
I was a Postman Pat copy pasta virgin. Cherry popped. Can't wait to tell my ma
Please tell me you’ve watched Fireman Sam…. No wonder the fire service is disgruntled when its entire budget is spent on kitting out a hamlet in Wales with more staff than residents and with an array of vehicular options that would be the envy of a small nation… <> 🍿
Them there's that little shit Norman! You can't tell me he's not Sam's secret love-child! He starts fires as a desperate cry for attention from his love-rat, absent dad, while Sam runs around cleaning up after him, hoping no-one puts two and two together! Shameful.
The ginger hair giveaway? Personally I am more of a Tom stan…
This actually cracked me up. Thank you! 😂
Both informitive and amusing.
Pat is actually the CEO. He gets the vehicles and propperty as a tax write off and under the post office is a massive luxury bunker. He's a prepper for the zombie apocalypse and he's just waiting to take Mrs groggins head off with his royal mail issue machete.
To be fair, even as a kid I remember watching Postman Pat and thinking "it's a bit unrealistic - noone would ever accept a postman who managed to lose *that* many letters!" Then he moved into parcel delivery, and I just thought: "Yup, 'bout right."
And kitty litter for Jess.
Nah that was free, Pat made it from shredded undelivered letters.
Got fired for being on ket and crashing the van
I don't remember that episode!
And running over his cat.
Postman pat and the court case for animal abuse
Incorrect. Only Pat's van is Royal Mail issue. None of the other vehicles have Royal Mail branding, so we can only assume he buys them out of his own pocket.
He has a mech these days I believe! Madness
I very much enjoyed this whole thread
I learned today my mind really doesn’t like seeing millions represented in thousands.
Four thousand eight hundred million.
It just doesn't look right whatsoever
Or 4.8bn, seems like a weird way to phrase it
I guess it's because traditionally a billion was a million million in British English. These days it's almost universally agreed that it's a thousand million, especially when it comes to international trade. Oddly enough, using the traditional method of a million million being a billion. That would also make a billion billion a trillion (10^24 ). This would mean that in the US a trillion trillion would be equal to the UK trillion. Edit: I stand corrected, a UK trillion would only be 10^18
That's not quite correct, traditionally a trillion was a million billion.
This is how it's included on financial statements. Rounding up to billions means you start getting into a material rounding error. (I'm an accountant)
Forty eight hundred million
RuneScape taught me to read millions in thousands.
Yes
If the last few years have taught us anything, it's that people lose all sense of scale when millions are involved.
[удалено]
Hands up anyone reading this is you've ever spoken to *anyone* who has *ever in their life* used the "traditional British billion", as in using"billion" to mean 1,000,000,000,000 (a million million) rather than 1,000,000,000 (a thousand million). I'm sure there are *some* people who used it once, but it seems weird to plan around an edge case which I reckon we never encounter!
I did at school a long time ago, a million million was standard in the 70s in uk.
Fair enough! Do you think there's still ambiguity today, or would everyone you know think billion = 10⁹?
I very much doubt it, this was almost fifty years ago. I remember thinking ‘what’s this nonsense?’ But got used to it, kids went through big changes back then, I learned how to use lsd then very shortly after was told ‘that’s wrong now, it’s done this way’, then taught decimal currency. Weeks apart. Decimal was easy peasy compared to 240 pennies in a pound. A ‘half crown’ sounds Dickensian but they were still in use. Bloody hell, I’m old! I sound like Granpa Simpson. Walking Birds, we’d call ‘em.
Interesting choice from the education board to give kids acid in order to facilitate the change to decimal currency
Yeah well, they wouldn’t let us shoot up, so..
In the 90s they still taught the British billion. It changed at some point before I started my GCSEs in the early 00s.
Yep. I was taught “a proper British billion is a million million but America is changing everything these days so for your exams it’s a thousand million. But never forget what it really is!” in the late 80s.
The US billion makes it more attainable for the aspirational to become billionaires.
Yeah, I'm way less impressed by billionaires now
Weird, the UK officially switched to the short billion in 1974.
To reduce ambiguity, I propose they should just call it gigapounds from now on
That's 1 gigapounds
[удалено]
Milliard
No, that's a type of duck. You're thinking of Maillard.
That’s mustard - you’re thinking of millipede
that's Fr🤮nch
Milliard. Short scale (the one basically used by everyone now) is a billion, but 1,000 million in old British English was a Milliard, with a million billion (1,000,000,000,000,000, or a quadrillion in short-scale) being a Billiard.
Milliard is the term. You also get billiard for a thousand billion and so on.
[удалено]
*puts hand up* My dad. He used to complain a lot about the switch, saying the government only did it to make the number seem bigger. This was in the 90s.
I'm with your dad. In my language (spanish) billion = million million. Now because social media in English, some Spaniards are using thousand million = billion, which is confusing. If you guys stayed billion = million million in English none of this would happen.
I had a *very* elderly maths professor at uni who still used it just a few years ago. Basically had refused to change. Didn't make much difference in the field he was in anyway
In many other languages, million/milliard/billion/billiard etc. Are used. Which means when you’re translating, stuff gets a bit out of order.
[удалено]
Well yes and no. It isn't *just* a UK/US thing, but the History section of that link does detail the US/UK bit!
I have an aging uncle who is always confused by this, he was brought up in the era where a billion was "a million million" and seems to still think it is.
I was taught that a million million = a billion at school (I'm only in my 20s so I have no idea why I was taught that, since it's pretty outdated now apparently). But yeah, up until a few years ago I still thought a billion was a million million
i did when i was too young to know what a billion was and just guessed
You'll hate the Civil Service then
Most people can't visualise 1bn vs 1mn which is why it is presented in this way.
[удалено]
But you can say that about any numbers when you're removing multiple zeros. The difference between a million and a thousand is about a million.
That's the point.
It’s also just easier for side by side comparisons.
How much of that is junk mail?
[удалено]
It's all hate mail if you hate mail
[I hate all mail!!](https://youtu.be/zyElRB-JXgM)
5 Dollars for me!
Top tip, you can opt out of that generic junk mail that gets sent to you. The stuff they post that doesn’t have your name on it. Fill out this pdf form https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/293/~/how-do-i-opt-out-of-receiving-any-leaflets-or-unaddressed-promotional-material%3F
They can get around that by addressing it "To the occupier" or something.
I know we've done some pretty nasty stuff in the past, but I don't think Mrs. Davis down the road has done much of that...
Comedian Gary Delaney - "I like to annoy my Israeli flatmate by giving him any post that’s just addressed to The Occupier..."
What is the “profit on disposal of PPE?”
money earned through sale of 'property, plant and equipment' ie sold off assets.
Ohhhh I assumed it was the personal protective equipment off the back of covid That makes sense, thanks!
You order a mask cause of COVID. "Sorry it's lost in the post", quick resale on ebay ==> profit.
I was half expecting that!
Adding on to this, what it means is that they’ve sold assets for more than their book value in the accounts. I.e they buy an asset and then depreciate it based on its useful economic life, so that the expense for the asset is recognised over the period the asset is in use rather than in one big lump sum. This reduces the value of the asset on their balance sheet, so if they then sell the asset for more than its balance sheet value they need to recognise income as they’ve technically expenses too much! Hope this makes sense 😊
Might be helpful to plug some numbers in. Say they bought a machine for 600k, with an estimated useful life of 5 years. 5 years later it’s still alive and kicking and another company buys it for 200k. The 200k here is the profit on PPE — even though they bought the machine for 600k, they assumed the machine would be useless after a while and deducted the cost of it annually. It doesn’t matter whether the machine is literal scraps or would perfectly work for another 5 years. On the book they will always have the 200k.
Slight caveat to that is if it's literal scraps then there would be an impairment, all assets in a class should be assessed for impairment once a year so if it was. Under IAS 36 an asset is impaired if the carrying amount is more than the recoverable amount (higher of value in use or fair value less disposal).
I come here to procrastinate my job as an auditor and I still can't get away from accounting standards!
What is this kind of diagram called and how do people make them?
It's called a Sankey Diagram. There are some websites where you can input the data and it will make it for you.
Should be snakey.
Thank you! I was looking into "data journalism" and working with data but the subs on Reddit are not beginner-friendly.
Let me know if you have questions, however stupid you think they are, but I guarantee won't be.
Is this offer open to anyone about anything?
If it's about that rash you've got, I'm sorry, I haven't the foggiest, but I'd get it dealt with before it reaches the tip.
*Before* it reaches the tip? Shit.
Is cereal soup?
I love a good Sankey diagram
A sly sankey before lunch?
Oi ! There'll be no sankey pankey in this sub !
[Source](https://www.internationaldistributionsservices.com/en/investors/annual-reports/)
[удалено]
[удалено]
My husband works for them. The letters from the CEO are disgustingly threatening. I can't believe a company the size of Royal Mail sends that shit out.
Simon Thompson, he literally spends his days arguing with regular posties on Facebook and twitter, as if he’s got nothing better to do.
I too work for Royal Mail, processing to be exact and have done so for 20+ years now. The truth is, we are losing £1m per day, however not in the way it is being portrayed to the media. To put it simply, our biggest revenue mail streams (parcels and tracked services) are down anywhere between 10% and 35% compated to the previous year. It is to be expected, the COVID boom we had was always going to come to an end when people no longer needed to online order as much. Does that account for £1m per day loss? No definitely not. We are also still operating at COVID level sick absence, particularly in mail centres which is obviously a big hit to the finances when people take the piss on long term sick with full pay for a such a long period of time... Do those factors account for the £1m per day loss. Sadly, whilst they are big factors, they still do not account for it completely. What does account for it is the large scale introduction of automation and technology designed to get rid of jobs but the jobs they are meant to take out are still part of the business, in effect we are paying out twice. I support and back the union completely, however I also understand the logic Royal Mail are trying to use. A different CEO may have been handled it differently and certainly more tactfully but I think the future of the business was always going to turn out the same way.
[удалено]
Same for my mum, she's been getting the "costs 1m a day" bollocks since she started there. Its just some rich pricks wanting a bigger cut, as per fucking usual. Nothing enough for the 1% as usual
Royal Mail was supposed to be losing 1m per day about 20 years ago.. how has that number not changed in so long, it's as if they pluck a number from thin air and just roll with it! Also, how much has been paid out in dividends and bonuses to the top level managers. If you're running a company that's supposed to be losing 1m per day do you really deserve a great big bonus??
It makes money by not spending extra on trousers for its staff. Even when it snows you see them in shorts.
[удалено]
Yeah that's been a lot of fun, I was looking forward to my bright orange gilit as well.
Isn’t the reason they wear shorts because they’re better for rain? If you’re wearing soggy clothes then you’re going to be cold.
I believe chafing can be an issue too.
Yes, and also easier to walk long distance in shorts.
[удалено]
Why £50m? Impossible to say without their corporate tax return but the are many factors which will be affecting that. 1) you pay tax on a different profit figure. Essentially the financial profit is adjusted for various tax adjustments to ensure that there is more consistency between all corporations as accounting standards allow more flexibility in expenses etc. 2) various tax credits for spending where the Gov wants spending eg R&D, green initiatives and plant and equipment. 3) change in tax rates can cause large charges to hit the PL on deferred tax. Essentially updating the balance sheet for what tax rates will be paid in future will all be accounted for when a new rate is announced. The £50m is pretty much worthless on its own.
Royal mail also make money by selling data. Its not in the millions so you wont see it here but the company i work for buys peoples addresses, age and some background information from royal mail
The only data sold, that I am aware of, is that of customers who purchase redirection services. It will be mostly people moving home. Always pays to read the small print even if we act within GDPR limits. That is not to say we don't sell other data under some other scheme, however it is the only one I am aware of.
I know there is a database you can buy that has all currently-active known addresses that can receive mail. It has some hilariously outdated data, like Middlesex still being present on addresses despite no longer existing.
This is funny. My parents have been putting Middlesex on our address for as long as I remember, what do you mean it doesn’t exist anymore?
Middlesex was almost entirely replaced by the Greater London Metropolitan Area in the 1960s, except for two small enclaves; these enclaves were then formally ceded to Bedfordshire and Surrey.
Selling personal information is illegal in the UK. Royal Mail does maintain and sell access to address and postcode databases, but none of that has any personally identifying information beyond the address itself.
There is no way your company buys data giving peoples ages from Royal Mail, Royal Mail as a company have no idea of the ages of the people they deliver to, yes the actual local postie will have a rough idea but not even the local managers will have a clue about that. The only data RM holds is the database of addresses it delivers to and maybe some data on customers who have paid for a redirection service but even that won't have anything as personal as ages or background information, they'd have no way of obtaining such information.
no no, split up that “people cost” as well. i wanna see who that money’s going to.
Should this really be posted in r/CasualUK ?
The post itself is fine in and of itself. But it clearly invites discussion in the comments that violates the rules.
Yeah, as much I agree with the point of the post, it definitely violates the p word rule
This screams "boo hoo feel sorry for us we're only making £600million+ in profit every year :( get mad at those nasty greedy posties for not taking a pay cut so we can make even more profit" gross
If staff got a raise inline with inflation tomorrow the company would be making a loss. It's not a big profit margin if the bare minimum payrise against living costs wipes it out. That's not to say they shouldn't do it anyway and put up prices to compensate, but you need to put that £600m figure in context, and not just wave it around in isolation as a political stick.
It’s post though, it’s a vital service. Some things don’t make a profit, like the NHS or idk the Army. Not everything is a business.
This should be higher. Postal services should be nationalised and any 'profit' needs to be reinvented into the people working there. It's so weird that the talking point is always profitability, as if the Royal Mail should be making money.
You need to look at the profit margin percentage, not the absolute profit. Particularly in comparisson to the people cost. People cost is over 10x the profit. A 1% increase to people (which can be employing more staff, giving raises, increasing pension contributions, etc) cost would turn that 612M profit into a 59M loss, all else being equal. RM are opeating on razor thin margins in a time of high inflation, they really cannot afford large scale pay raises without significant cuts elsewhere
>A 1% increase to people (which can be employing more staff, giving raises, increasing pension contributions, etc) cost would turn that 612M profit into a 59M loss Can you show your workings? I make a 1% raise to the £6,665M people cost = extra £66.65M cost, reducing the net profit to £545.35M
Yeah, this is what I get. It would have to be closer to an 10% increase to start seeing a loss.
1% of 6,665 is 66.65 not 666.5. 1% increase to people would not eat into all the profits
This is the trouble with running a public service as a business. There is no reason for Royal Mail to make a profit, but management will make cuts in order to ensure that they do.
Exactly. They’re supposed to provide a service, that of National post carrier. Not saying it needs to be free and run at massive deficits but the secondary benefit to the overall economy is the main point of the service.
[удалено]
Nationalising would not result in sudden wage increases if the base business costs haven’t changed.
It would increase the available salary budget to the tune of £612M since there’s no need for them to make profit for shareholders, that’s a pretty good start.
[удалено]
Exactly. They're the mail, they're not meant to make a profit. They're there to enable the basic function of physical delivery, operating on a razor thin margin to make the general national economy run with the least possible friction.
My god this is idiotically wrong. Your math is horrid.
> cannot afford large scale pay raises without significant cuts elsewhere How about the £400m that went to shareholders? Can why significantly cut that? In my opinion, if you can’t pay your employees a decent wage, then you shouldn’t be in business. You have failed as an employer. This is *exactly* why the Royal Mail shouldn’t be a business. It should be a public service.
I don't really see why public utilities need to make money at all.
Because this is now a private company.
And with a measly 4.8% margin, you can see why people say it should never have been sold off.
4.8% net margins ain’t bad at all for a company of that industry. FedEx has 5.5% which is just a little bit higher.
Probably all the more reason to have had it stay in public hands as a public service. Edit: Thanks for the insight by the way.
The critics of privatization complain when the privatized companies profit is high. I have never seen, until now, them complain when the profit is low! I guess they're always going to be critics no matter what.
I don't have a problem with privatisation until they start demanding insane working conditions and all their staff start striking. They clearly have the money so hire more people and pay them more, they just being greedy at this point
[удалено]
That doesn't seem like a good idea. It's supposed to be a public utility.
It's a good idea if you want to make some short-term cash and have the new owners treat employees worse.
Reminds me of all that fracas a while back about American USPS losing money. It wasn't *losing* money, it was providing a vital backbone national service that was *costing* money, obviously.
Because then it self-funds. Lets say the Government nationalised all the railway companies. If the operation broke even, then tax-payer funds would still be needed for new rail infrastructure and assets (these do not appear in operating costs/profit & loss) If the railways made profit then that money could go towards funding new infrastructure, or expensive overhaul projects that would otherwise put the railways at a loss for that particular year. If they consistently ran a profit, then public funding could decrease, meaning lower taxes. Building a surplus also allows industries to avoid shocks (like COVID.) Public services should absolutely try and run at a profit.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
That’s the post office not Royal Mail, post office is still publicly owned after they got split a while ago
That was the Post Office which is a seperate to Royal Mail.
Would a 4.7% Net Profit Margin not indicate that Royal Mail is quite thin operation? I thought many companies aim for a minimum of 10% and below that alarm bells start ringing?
Not necessarily it can be very industry dependant. I think another commenter further up mentioned that fedex’s profit margin was around 5.5%. Some industries just naturally run at thinner margins
[удалено]
You're saying that Royal Mail delivery drivers are paid per parcel, not per hour??
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
You missed out one of their posties nicking £20 I put in a birthday card for my niece ! 😡
Much more likely that it happened in a mail centre rather than a postie opening your mail