Author: Duncan Campbell-Smith
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141973226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 840
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Book Description
The origins of the Post Office go back to the early years of the Tudor monarchy: Brian Tuke, a former King's Bailiff in Sandwich, was acknowledged as the first 'Master of the Posts' by Cardinal Wolsey in 1512, and went on to build up a network of 'postmasters' across England for Henry VIII. Over the following five hundred years the Royal Mail expanded to an unimaginable degree to become the largest employer in the country, and the face of the British state for most people in their everyday lives. But it also faced the demands of an increasingly commercial marketplace. With the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the possibility of privatising the Royal Mail has prompted passionate arguments - and has added immeasurably to the difficulties of running it. In charting the whole of this extraordinary story, Duncan Campbell-Smith recounts a series of remarkable tales, including how postal engineers built the first programmable computer for the wartime code-breakers of Bletchley Park and how the Royal Mail managed to successfully continue delivering post to the front lines during two world wars, but also how they failed to avert the Great Train Robbery of 1963. He brings to life many of the dominant personalities in the Royal Mail's history - from Rowland Hill, who imposed a uniform penny post and set the great Victorian expansion on its way, to Tony Benn who championed the modernisation of the service in the 1960s and Tom Jackson who led the postal workers' biggest union through fifteen frequently stormy years up to 1982. This is the first complete history of the Royal Mail up to the present day, based on its comprehensive archives, and including the first detailed account of the past half-century of Britain's postal history, made possible by privileged access to confidential records. Today's debate over the future of the Royal Mail is shown to be just the ;atest chapter in a centuries-old conflict between its roles raising revenue and serving the public. Will its employees remain, like Brian Tuke's postmasters, servants of the Crown? This book could hardly appear at a more timely moment.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0102937281
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 60
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Book Description
In March 2001, the Government set up the Postal Services Commission (Postcomm) to regulate the postal services market in the UK, in order to ensure the provision of a universal postal service and to promote effective competition and safeguard the interests of customers. Following on from an earlier NAO report (HCP 521, session 2001-02 (ISBN 0102913595) published in January 2002, this report examines developments in regulating the quality of service, focusing on the issue of price setting. The report finds that Postcomm has put in place service quality targets to protect the customer, and Royal Mail's performance against its targets has been improving since regulation was introduced. A number of recommendations are made to help improve the quality of service regime, including i) developing the information systems needed to provide a validation system for universal service failure reporting and to monitor collection and delivery times; and ii) monitoring the development of competition in the postal sector.
Author: John Cary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Geography
Languages : en
Pages : 828
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Book Description
Author: John CARY (Geographer)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 814
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Book Description
Author: Rachel Cole
Publisher: Philip Allan
ISBN: 1444147900
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
Written by Marwan Mikdadi and revised by a senior examiner, Rachel Cole, this Edexcel A2 Economics Student Unit Guide is the essential study companion for Unit 3: Economics and Economic Efficiency: clear guidance on the content of the unit, with topic summaries, knowledge check questions and a quick-reference index examiner's advice throughout, so you will know what to expect in the exam and will be able to demonstrate the skills requiredexam-style questions, with graded student responses, so you can see clearly what is required to get a better grade
Author: Melissa Davis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350034614
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
Branding is a discipline that has emerged over the last century to become a ubiquitous force in marketing. The Fundamentals of Branding offers an overview of the foundations of building, developing and maintaining brands. It provides insight into key aspects such as targeting audiences, trends, brand structures and brand architecture, and examines the fundamental client/agency relationship. It also places branding in a global context and discusses its relation to business practice as well as other creative disciplines.
Author: Gregor Gall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351765922
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
This title was first published in 2003.This book explores many of the major issues of concern to researchers studying trade unionism. It offers: a definition, elaboration and contextualisation of militancy (industrial, union and worker); an examination of the relationship between workplace unionism and the wider body of the union; a study of factionalism and industrial and political consciousness: and an analysis of the construction and mobilisation of conflict and cooperation (social partnership). These themes are considered through examining the relatively militant response of British postal workers to increased commercialisation of their industry. By comparing this response to that of postal workers in nine other major industrial countries, the study provides an explanation of why UK postal workers have been relatively successful in resisting new management techniques and privatisation through militancy and oppositionalism. One aspect given particular attention is the uneasy relationship within the postal workers' union between shop floor militancy and the social partnership approach followed by the union's leadership.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Business and Enterprise Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215532695
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
For Vol. 1, Report, see (ISBN 9780215532725)
Author: S.G. Sturmey
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1786948931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
This work is a reprint of a 1962 book, British Shipping and World Competition, by maritime economist Dr S. G. Sturmey. It seeks to explain why the tonnage of ships registered in the United Kingdom declined from forty-five percent of the world total in 1900, to sixteen percent by 1960. It presents four possible answers and proceeds to examine them in detail: changes in approaches to competition resulting in changes to the economic structure of the industry; international interference in competitive structures; unrelated factors, such as government policies that didn’t directly concern shipping but still caused an impact; and the internal actions within British shipping relating to changes in industrial circumstances. It is comprised of fifteen chapters, an appendix tabling the contribution of British shipping to the balance of payments, a bibliography, comprehensive index, epilogue, and a foreword from the series editor which states that the Sturmey’s arguments remain resonant in the field of maritime history in the present day. Sturmey makes a particular effort to place the activity in the British shipping industry into an international context for the sake of comparative analysis. It concludes that the decline of the industry was primarily due to internal decision-making rather than external factors - a conclusion that was considered divisive and provocative upon initial release, but has stood the test of time. The epilogue attempts to predict the future of British shipping post-1960, suggesting shipowners could improve the industry’s prospects: however, few of these predictions came to be.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Business and Enterprise Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215529473
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 68
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Book Description
In "Modernise or decline: policies to maintain the universal postal service in the United Kingdom" (Cm. 7529, ISBN 9780101752923) the Hooper review confirmed that Royal Mail Group was the only company capable of delivering the service and proposed a package to deal with the Group's problems. The state should take responsibility for the historic pension deficit; there should be a new regulatory regime, in which mail services would be regulated as part of wider communications services, and, most controversially, there should be a private sector equity partner in Royal Mail. The Government accepted these proposals (Cm. 7560, ISBN 9780101756020) and introduced the Postal Services Bill (HL Bill 24, ISBN 9780108454530). The Committee supports the proposals on the pension fund and the new regulatory regime. But it does not consider that the case has been made that these two reforms can only be made as part of a package which includes the third reform - the involvement of a private sector equity partner in Royal Mail. The provisions contained in the Bill allowing such a partnership are not necessary or desirable as the Government already has powers to sell shares to enable Royal Mail to participate in a joint-venture. There is a lack of clarity over how much investment is needed or where that investment will come from, while the Government appears to have no business plan and has not indicated the use to which any private sector capital would be put. Given this uncertainty the case must rest on its non-financial benefits, and the Committee poses several questions about the proposed partnership which must be addressed.
