Letter:Three cheers for privatisation

YOUR correspondent David L Seymour (Letters, 11 December) must live on another planet. A few years ago in our neck of the woods it was not unusual to wait 30 or 40 minutes for a bus. Then private buses appeared, regular as clockwork, and forced Lo ndon Transport to get its act together. Now your longest wait is about 10 minutes We also had a main post office. It had one open counter and three closed ones. The open one was manned by a surly, unhelpful person and there were queues into the street. Now we have a franchised post office, all four counters are open, service is friendly and queues have gone. Add to that the sterling service we get from BT and your positive article about the privatised mine in the Business section ("The private life of coal", 11 December) and we ask: why is privatisation a dirty word?

Is it propagated by people who go everywhere in taxis and send the au pair to the post office?

V L Levin Isleworth