Further erosion of postal service
From:
dermot dobson
Date:
May 06 09:51 UTC
Short link
Julia takes me to task:
>Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd are two different things, so comparison
>between Royal Mail and the US postal delivery service is completely
>misleading.
Hmm, I think not - As far as I'm aware, Post Office Ltd is still a wholly owned
subsidiary of Royal Mail Group Ltd so your claim that they are "two
different things" is mere sophistry.
US Postal Service and Royal Mail (including Post office Ltd) are still
comparable in many ways - except that, in the UK, HM Gov has removed the postal
monopoly. If the US can achieve an impressive delivery standard across a huge
country for a mere 22pence, why can't we? I guess it needs a lot of political
will and capital investment.
According to a report on the BBC this morning;
>The liberalisation of the UK postal service has produced "no significant
>benefits" for both households and small businesses.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7385044.stm
There seems to be something of a parallel with the rail closures under Beeching
in the 50's and 60's - he closed the unprofitable branch lines to concentrate
on the main lines. Of course, without the feeder traffic from the branch lines,
many of the main lines then became unprofitable.
Close enough local Post Offices and then the network behind it becomes
unprofitable as the traffic falls to an unsustainable level...
What would encourage me to use Royal Mail more for parcels would be a reliable
location in central Headington to collect them. Ideally, the postie wouldn't
even bother to try and deliver any package larger than my letterbox, instead,
just a card through the door - that would make their job easier and far more
time efficient and, hopefully, reduce the chances of loss. Obviously, different
households should be able to opt for a different delivery strategy.
Of course, we *used* to have such a place at the top of Lime Walk...
Unfortunately, the 'pay 50p and collect from local post office' service doesn't
seem to work too well, each time I've tried it, several weeks have elapsed
before I get my parcel - by cycling down to Littlemore to collect it.