Petitioning Royal Mail!

[Hussargeneral]

Signed...first post as well...I think this is important.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Hello Hussargeneral

[Fenton]

Welcome

Does this mean Last Hussar has to change his forum name now?..

[fsn]

Welcome Mr General.

May I invite you to tell us more on the "Intros and Welcomes" section? 

We love to hear about a new member's doings.

[Techno]

Welcome to the forum Hussargeneral.
Cheers - Phil.

[Fenton]

Welcome Mr General.


We love to hear about a new member's doings.

I beg your pardon

[Leon]

As we mentioned previously, Royal Mail have changed the reasoning for these restrictions from 'Dangerous Goods' to 'potential damage to other mail', so we have now sent them a list of questions as a result:

"As a follow-up to our recent discussions on water-based paints, and the restrictions on them in your guidelines, I have a few more questions:-

1.  In our original discussions, the reason given for Parcel Force being able to ship these items was due to them having a Dangerous Goods license.  Now that we have determined that these items are not in fact 'Dangerous Goods', what is the new reason for Parcel Force being able to ship these paints, and how are they overcoming the same 'potential damage to other mail' reasoning which worries Royal Mail?

2.  Do you have any statistics which show the frequency of breakages/leakages in the mail, and more specifically, how many of these are caused by water-based paints?

3.  The restrictions allow the shipping of upto 1 litre of alcohol, does this not pose a greater risk of leakage / breakage than 4 small pots of paint, even more so when the alcohol is likely to be shipped in a single glass container?

Many thanks,

Leon Pengilley"

We will now have to wait and see what they reply with before proceeding.

In the meantime though, we still need to grow the support, and get this noticed on a national scale by the mainstream media.  To do this, we're asking you to help out by doing two things:

1. Write to your local MP, using the template which can be found on our new Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/PostOurPaint/posts/245576305607450 (modify it to suit if you wish).  A full list of UK MP's listed by their consituency can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/?sort=1  If you get a response, please let us know on the Facebook page, or by email to me directly at leonpengilley@hotmail.com

2.  Write to any local newspapers or other media in your area to bring this to their attention as well.  The MP letter template linked above can be used for this as well, with only minor modification.

Also, please head over and join our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/PostOurPaint which allows us to keep everyone up to date with the latest news and discussions as we move forward with this.  You can also update here as you get responses from your local MP's / media.

Thanks for reading, and again, thank you for your support.  Please pass this update around your friends, forums and Facebooks, and we'll keep pushing to get these restrictions changed!  

PS, I hope everyone has a merry Christmas as well, there might not be many paints under your tree, but I hope there's something good in their place...!

Cheers!

[ronan]

a small step toward Victory ?

[Ithoriel]

Email sent to Mike Crockart who is not only my constituency MP but also on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee - auto-reply from him says he hopes to respond within two weeks, though I wouldn't hold him to that given the season of the year!

[SnM Stuff]

I've been following (and affected) by this for a while, but this is my first post here... please be gentle with me 

If we find Royal Mail starting to be less than forthcoming with information, I spoke with the FSB legal advice line today, and they confirmed that Royal Mail would still be obligated to respond to Freedom of Information Requests relating to any events prior to privatisation, as they were effectively a public body at that time.  They also advised that if this is confirmed to be a commercial decision by Royal Mail rather than a regulatory one, that if they followed through with their threats of prosecution, the only immediately obvious grounds would be breach of contract (although we didn't discuss whether this could be extended in the event of an actual incident).  In addition, if the currently unsubstantiated rumours are true, and Royal Mail are really sending confiscated parcels for auction rather than destruction, then they could potentially be exposed to litigation on the grounds of selling goods which are not their property.

I've been lobbying within the FSB for a while about this and other Royal Mail issues, although it is hard pushing it up their list of priorities when there are so many other things that are also on their radar.  As a member of their Surrey Policy Team, I was able to draw up a questionnaire on Royal Mail issues and get it sent out to Surrey & Sussex members, and I believe it's now been adopted and sent out in a variety of other regions as well.  Admittedly it was created before this issue arose, but hopefully it'll keep post issues on the FSB radar. 

Having written to Damian Collins MP (the Conservative Small Business Champion for the South East) about Royal Mail issues about 2 months ago and received no reply, I am less optimistic about political support - I guess the MP's all got free shares and lined up for nice cushy non-exec directorships

Leon - I included a link to your petition in the email newsletter I sent out this evening, so hopefully that'll add a few more signatures although it's a pleasure to see how many of my existing customers have already signed !

Hopefully that helps a little

[Leon]

Thanks for the post, good to hear from you, and thanks for all the info and work at your end. 

The FSB advice is very interesting, and will be of help when it comes to getting some data from them on how many breakages/leakages they've had previously.  I'm very interested in the rumour you mention as well, and I've tried to do some digging on that, but nothing concrete seems to be out there.  We'd really need someone down in the Essex (?) area who knows of any auctions/sales of that type who could verify that they were re-directed confiscated goods or not.

I'm not sure how much impact contacting the MP's will have, due to the privatisation of RM, our smaller issue getting onto their radar and their daily workload of regular stuff, but it's always worth a try.  The opposition MP's are always looking for a stick to beat their counterparts with, so you never know.  If some of the local newspapers can pick up on the story as well, that might get a lot more coverage for us.

One large market which is yet to fully get on board is the artists, as I don't think they've seen any direct effect at their end yet.  If we can tap into that, there's potentially 100's of thousands of extra people, giving a lot more sway on a political level as well.

[Russell Phillips]

1. Write to your local MP, using the template which can be found on our new Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/PostOurPaint/posts/245576305607450 (modify it to suit if you wish).  A full list of UK MP's listed by their consituency can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/?sort=1  If you get a response, please let us know on the Facebook page, or by email to me directly at leonpengilley@hotmail.com

A couple of points about this:

1. Don't just copy & paste the text from Facebook. By all means use it for inspiration, but use your own words. WriteToThem has a quote from a parliamentary researcher (whose job is to make the MP he/she works for as accessible as possible) about why in their FAQ:

MPs rather naturally take a sudden influx of identical or similar messages with a large pinch of salt, since they know that what they are seeing is stuff from a minority of constituents who are either impassioned/neurotic about the topic concerned or who are easily gulled into agreeing with some plausible story and sending the message, since it takes minimum effort to do so.

Given a daily mailbag of (say) 50 individual messages from individual constituents, on a wide range of topics, when the mailbag suddenly rises to 100 a day, 50 of which are much the same as each other, the representative has no way at all of knowing whether the message concerned is representative of opinion in the constituency.

All he or she knows is that 50 constituents have been persuaded to mail them about 'topic X'. Much more notice is taken of trends within the regular flow of messages from clearly identified constituents. If in a month 50 people write in different ways and through different routes with similar views on a subject, this is much more likely to raise the profile of the topic with the MP.

Full FAQ entry at https://www.writetothem.com/about-qa#formletters

WriteToThem is a website set up to make it easy for people to contact their MP. If you want to write to your MP about this, it's an excellent resource: https://www.writetothem.com/

The same people made WhatDoTheyKnow, a website that makes it easier to make freedom of information requests, which may be useful in the near future: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

[Steve J]

I noticed that this issue has made it to the mainstream realms of printed media:

http://henrys-wargaming.co.uk/?p=1542

[Leon]

I noticed that this issue has made it to the mainstream realms of printed media:

http://henrys-wargaming.co.uk/?p=1542

Excellent, looking forward to seeing my name in print (albeit missing the 'e' in Pengilley!)

[petercooman]

Today the printed press, tomorrow the world!!!   

[fsn]

Excellent, looking forward to seeing my name in print (albeit missing the 'e' in Pengilley!)

"Pngilley"?

[Steve J]

More like 'Pngilly' surely?

[goat major]

is it a silent Png ?

[sebigboss79]

 

[Fenton]

Just looked I think they corrected your name..Well I am presuming you are still using the common spelling of Pengilly.That would be correct Sir Leon wouldnt it