Jim Armitage: When the British public put its stamp on privatisation

Outlook Forgive the nerdiness, but a snippet from Royal Mail’s half-year cashflow figures yesterday showed how savvy we Brits are about privatised utilities.

Guessing (rightly) that post prices would soar after last October’s privatisation, punters bought stamps in large volumes beforehand. So it was that, in the half-year to September 2013, only £15m of stamps were used that had been bought in previous months. In the half year just gone, that had practically doubled to £29m.