The Scandal of Unsorted the Mail

Great Britain already has one of the most expensive postal systems in the world particularly when one takes in to account income levels. Royal Mail continues to deny that fact by saying stamp prices for letters weighing up to 100g are among the lowest in Europe. The price of a first-class stamp will rise by 5p to 46p in April and a second-class stamp will cost 36p, an increase of 4p. Posting a large letter will also become more expensive, 75p ,up 9p, for first-class and 58p, up 7p, for second-class mail.

Why the hell do we even have a second class service when sending a first class letter to an address in the same town can take over a week? Personally I have been keeping track of my mail and I very rarely get mail other than on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I may get some mail on Fridays but until this week I have not had anything on Monday or Saturday since forever. So imagine my surprise when I was woken a 08:30 on Sunday morning by a Royal Mail delivery, it was a parcel that needed signing for.

So why is Royal Mail so crap? There may be a clue in the conversation I had with a postal worker the other day. This chap told me he is working overtime doing extra rounds. "Some off the guys are going out three times a day" he said "but my bag is not even half full because no-one is being given overtime on the sorting side." Apparently the sorting office is floor to celling but there is little or no sorting going on. It is not just the Christmas post that has caused this. I was told that the condition has been like that for months. For anyone familiar with the TV adaption of Terry Pratchett's book 'Going Postal' the Royal Mail is rapidly becoming the Ankh Morpork Post Office, but Royal Mail has no Moist von Lipwig to pull them out of their rapidly spiralling swan dive in service.

The latest news is Royal Mail had announced they are to commence evening deliveries to try to catch up with the backlog caused, they say, by the bad weather. So now not content at waking me up on a Sunday morning they want to disturb my evenings tucked up by the fire too. I am sure the postmen and women are looking forward to working sixteen hour shifts as well.

There is one good side to the price rises; Direct mail services are facing price rises of up to 19%. Hopefully that will cut the crap coming through our mail boxes. Why do I get half a dozen mail shots a week from Sky television when I have it already? How the heck can a local Indian Restaurant afford to send me their menu three times a week? Never mind recycling to save a tree, if we banned direct mail services we could save a whole forest every week. If the postal workers did not have to deliver this junk we might have a postal service that works and one we did not mind paying for.