LONDON (Reuters) – Whistl, a firm launching a rival delivery service to Britain's dominant player Royal Mail, on Thursday lost a High Court challenge to have the former state-owned postal operator's VAT … More: continued here

Whistl loses challenge to Royal Mail's tax exemptionYahoo!7 NewsLONDON (Reuters) – Whistl, a firm launching a rival delivery service to Britain's dominant player Royal Mail, on Thursday lost a High Court challenge to have the former state-owned postal operator's VAT exemption removed. As part of its status as …and more » …

The success of parastatals, including the SA Post Office is to balance financial viability with their government mandate, says Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas. More: continued here

Mirror.co.uk City or United? Dad auctions off baby son's football allegiance on eBay to …Mirror.co.ukIan Charters, 30, has put his son's future football love up for sale on eBay– with the winning bidder getting to choose who little Eddie will support for the rest of his life. Watford fan Ian, …

Replacement Royal Mail sorting office 'immediately terrible'This is Local LondonThe new Royal Mail sorting office in the Bush Industrial Estate has proved immediately unpopular, with complaints from unhappy customers flooding in. Royal Mail closed the Hornsey sorting office in September, and people have since had to go to the new … …

GeekWork: eBay is hiring for its next-generation shipping and logistics platformGeekWiregeekwork1 “I wouldn't call it a change in direction but a greater focus and clarity,” eBay CEO John Donahoe told Forbes on the day of its headline-making split with PayPal. “The nice thing about the spin-off is that it allows …

ROYAL Mail has confirmed it will close its Rochford delivery office and move services to Southend in January. More: continued here

CONFIRMED: Houston's rare victory in preventing post office closureChron.com (blog)This happened despite actions that “may be seen as an attempt to minimize public input,” according to a Post Office Relocation Process audit report released last month by the agency's Office of Inspector General (see the full report below). This line …

Gigaom eBay open sources a big, fast SQL-on-Hadoop databaseGigaomOnline auction site eBay has open sourced a database technology called Kylin that the company says enables fast queries over even petabytes of data stored in Hadoop. eBay isn't a big data user on par with companies like Google and Facebook, but …

Royal Mail and Amazon on the hunt for Christmas peak staffMotor Transport (blog)Royal Mail and Amazon UK have both launched a recruitment drive for hundreds of temporary staff to assist with the increase in peak volumes expected this Christmas. The mail and parcel carrier hopes to bring an additional 19,000 …