Britain sells off postal service stake to cut debt

[Recursion]

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Britain's newly elected government has announced plans to sell off its remaining stake in Royal Mail and slash ministry budgets in a bid to cut £4.5 billion ($A8.9 billion) from state debt this year.

Less than a month after Prime Minister David Cameron was re-elected at the head of a Conservative government, his chief finance minister George Osborne said they would waste no time in pursuing their goal of balancing the books.

The sale of the government's 30 per cent stake in the Royal Mail postal service is expected to earn the state about £1.5 billion, the Treasury said in a statement.

A further £3 billion of savings have been identified for this year in government departments, including £500 million from the defence budget.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/britain-sells-off-postal-service-stake-to-cut-debt-20150605-ghhh8u.html

[djean111]

1. And the GOP weep with jealousy.

[FreakinDJ]

6. Britton are experts in the State of Declining Empire

[kentauros]

2. I wonder how long it will take

before their citizens are begging them to buy it back...

[Helen Borg]

8. Yup, I agree...

[RufusTFirefly]

3. David Cameron is one scary dude

Guardian: What if David Cameron is an evil genius?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/01/david-cameron-moriarty-downing-street-radical-thatcher

Here, in what may well be the final years of our civilisation, I would like to ask a question that has been worrying me for some time. What if David Cameron is a genius? A shrewd and malevolent psychopath who thinks two moves deeper into the game than any of his opponents? What if there sits in Downing Street today a modern-day Moriarty, living in a world where his schemes are only kept in check by the deductive brilliance of Harriet Harman? As Holmes would say, look at the evidence. Cameron has managed to set England against Scotland, Scotland against Labour. He has given his enemies the referendums they asked for, and won. He has left Nick Clegg looking like one of those terrified mouse faces that you find in an owl pellet. He has successfully pursued an agenda more radical than Thatcher’s with less popular support than John Major.

[appalachiablue]

11. Very interesting concept of Cameron, esp. re trade, TTIP and corporate governance.

[Ed Suspicious]

4. Conservative morons.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. I guess Cameron will sell off the NHS next!

Why are British people so short-sighted. Instead of paying for Blair's Iraq war they could have funded the post office etc.

[Helen Borg]

9. That is the plan, I believe.

[appalachiablue]

7. Effing Tories

Cameron, a psychopath possibly and even more of a tosser.

[davidpdx]

10. This is exactly what the Republicans in the US want to do

I'd say I feel sorry for the British for having an idiot like Cameron as their leader, but they did vote for his party in parliament.