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We have virtually no control over pricing of gas, electricity of water, no control over investment in the industries and end up with some of the most expensive utilities in Europe with people paying different rates for the same gas and electricity coming down the same pipes and wires in the same street. We have hardly any storage facilities to buy gas when it is cheap, because that costs profits, and hardly enough spare capacity to cope if we have a hard winter for the same reason. But set against that of course, we do have some of the best bonuses for executives in the industry so at least it is not all bad.

We have a free for all in telephones where no one has any idea which provider is best or cheapest, a public transport system where no one seems to be responsible for anything, trains are cancelled to make them on time and you need a degree in logic to book a ticket from A to B. There are buses of more hues than a rainbow on speed from companies who are in there with rail franchisees in making big profits and soaking up more in subsidies than British Rail and our bus services could dream about in their wildest moments.

We have a health service where private health companies are being slipped in by stealth and an education system where any form or a loony with a few bob are invited to start their own schools.

Now, after hiving off the profitable bits of the postal service under the guise of competition - the TNTs and DHLs of this world do not want to get involved with delivering Christmas cards to hill farms in Wales or crofters in the Hebrides God forbid - Lord Mandelson now proposes flogging off a large chunk to a private partner which, he claims, will be in keeping a manifesto promise to keep the postal service in state hands. For how long he does not say. I am sure it will improve profits for whichever of the former trade commissioner's European buddies wins the raffle but there is more chance of Walsall winning the Champion's League than there is of any improvement in service.

We pay more and more in taxes, employ more and more civil servants, yet hardly have a public service left when it comes to serving the public. Mandelson has sounded the death knell for Royal Mail which will go the way of all other public services and utilities with profit the priority and damn the public and the service.