City View Sterling's a dilemma

THE Government has received two bids to run nationwide postal services in direct competition with the Royal Mail. We do not know who the applicants are but they are assumed to be Deutsche Post – the German Post Office – and Federal Express, the American courier company. Any competition is an improvement but who needs national networks? The market would more naturally evolve with myriad little companies serving different communities and exchanging their letters and packages informally. Nobody knows what people seek from a letter service. It is possible internet and fax mean speed is of little interest. A letter delivered for a penny four or five days later might be a better deal than one delivered the following day for 28p. We ought to wish success to the new rivals to the sleepy Royal Mail but the Government’s model of a national system is surely wrong-headed. In Edinburgh the bulk of mail is delivered to friends and business contacts within the city. We would be better off with a few local letter delivery companies than the mighty Deutsche Post merely replicating the Post Office. Bets finally click WE are all familiar with pornography being the
leading service on the internet but catching up fast is gambling. The internet can only reflect human nature and it seems these two appetites will never be satisfied. Can investors make money from the silly disposition of gamblers who
think they can beat the system? Several companies are well placed but the most eminent is WagerWorks which supplies much of the software for this new craze. The company is itself a spin-off from a slot-machine maker.

Peter Clarke