[johneth]

Minor pedantic correction:

The Post Office (shops, services, government forms, etc.) is still fully government-owned. It's the Royal Mail (delivery) that was privatised. They used to be the same company but split in two before Royal Mail was privatised.

[normangray]

Thank you! – yes, it's a private company, fully owned by the Government. I think I sort-of knew that, but it hadn't properly registered; I may indeed have been confusing it with Royal Mail.

It means that the PO is quite closely analogous to the Ordnance Survey, in organisational terms. It's maybe describable as a quasi-privatisation, in that the company is run on a fully commercial basis, with correspondingly narrow goals in principle, but with the profits (or, in the case of the PO, the losses) going to the Exchequer, and the relevant minister (presumably) having some say about the appointment of board members.

It's organisationally tidy, I suppose, and manages to fit in with the long-standing 'private=efficient' doctrine. It still feels vaguely off, to me; not quite cricket.