Special delivery

Operating profits of £177m at Royal Mail - a doubling of last year's figure - ought to be good news. Instead, the warning that the improvement was achieved despite the universal service continuing to make a loss and ever-more intense competition from rival operators has fed fears that it is likely to be part-privatised. It will take more than chairman Allan Leighton's assurances of a commitment to the universal delivery service to allay fears that one of the last remaining great British institutions will not be sold off in job lots to the highest bidders.