I fear that your future scenario for Royal Mail (Editorial, 13 September) is over-optimistic. My guess is that by 2020 the company will have fallen into the hands of private equity who, by 2023, will have burdened it with debt to line their pockets so that by 2025 the company is struggling to provide the universal delivery service. Next the owners will go to the government and request a subsidy and, since government believes that the country still needs such a provision, they will reluctantly agree.
If this government believes the UK must have a universal postal delivery service, they will, in the last resort, have to guarantee it. If that is their belief then they're crackers to privatise Royal Mail because at sometime in the future the government of the day will be had. Better to turn Royal Mail into a guarantee company, transfer all the assets and hence the company can borrow against those assets. In any case, if it is currently making money, does it really need to borrow? The decision to privatise is just an ill-judged move to raise a few quid.
Tony Ward
Loughborough, Leicestershire
• Not only are Vince Cable and his fellow Lib Dems in government lending weight to this questionable and potentially destructive policy, but they are acceding to the pernicious provisions of the Postal Services Act 2011, which facilitates the abandonment of the universal service obligation by 2021. That such a course is likely to provoke a potentially counter-productive and suicidal strike by members of the CWU adds a further twist to this unfolding tragedy. For those of us who were once members of the Liberal party, and who have extended electoral support for Cable in his Twickenham constituency through four elections, it seems like the final act of betrayal. Whatever happened to the 2010 manifesto aim "to hard-wire fairness into national life"?
Paul Velluet
Twickenham, Middlesex
• Please don't let Vince Cable get away with the claim that the privatised postal service here in Belgium is a success (Comment, 13 September). Large numbers of post offices have been and are being closed. Postal workers are being offered very short-term contracts, and lumbered with increasing workloads. This is disastrous for the workers, and for anyone hoping for post to arrive, since many mistakes are made when deliverers are overworked, rushed and often unfamiliar with the delivery area. There is nobody here I've spoken to who is happy with this privatised service. Cable must have been speaking to someone who is profiting from it.
Kate Read
Kraainem, Belgium
• When I read that Michael Fallon said Royal Mail must be sold so it could borrow private money (Report, 13 September), I thought: "Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise a scheme where they could do this and still remain in public ownership." Then I moved on to the next article (Five years on from Lehman: 'We had almost no control') and realised that, yes, it could be beyond the wit of the men who run our country.
Laurie Moye
Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire
• I don't understand why the Royal Mail can't access the capital markets and enjoy true financial freedom yet remain in public ownership. The same clearly doesn't apply to RBS and Lloyds, and didn't while Northern Rock sojourned at the taxpayer's pleasure. Can someone explain?
Josh Berle
London
• Financial pundits are already predicting "big dividend cheques" for investors in the Royal Mail privatisation. For what? Parking money in a share account? With low-paid postal workers' wages subsidised by tax credits and housing benefit, and pension-fund liability remaining with the state, this natural monopoly, buoyed by internet fulfilment business, could hardly fail to make a profit. Previous privatisations – such as British Gas – saw small investors' shares quickly acquired by big funds happy to collude with whatever the board desired. Expect big bonuses, the "rationalisation" of assets, including sorting offices, and people in rural areas forced to collect their mail from post offices in distant towns, as is the case in parts of North America. Meanwhile the Post Office's current £80m contribution to the exchequer will flow into private pockets. This is simply white-collar theft.
Dave Young
London