...not just because privatisation of the Royal Mail is going to be a royal mess, like privatisation of the railways, nor because it will be an expensive mess too, but because having loads of couriers competing with each other is a waste of fuel.
Say I have 2 letters and a parcel delivered in one day. Under the old system, the postie knows where to go because she comes past my house every day. She comes to my door and puts the letters in and rings the bell. If I am out, she puts the parcel in a special place that we have agreed, and goes on her way.
Everyone is happy.
With private couriers, three different vans come, two to deliver one letter each, and one to deliver the parcel. They do not know where my house is, and the SatNav sends them to the muddy car park in the wood down at the bottom of the hill. They have to turn round and ask a neighbour where I may be. Eventually after much frustration, one finds my house and delivers his letter, but the second letter is in a van that is too wide to fit in the lane, so he has to go back, park up the van and walk up the hill to find my house. Meanwhile the third man with the parcel does drive up to the house, but cannot leave it there because he knows not of the special place to leave things, so he leaves an illegible note to say what I have to do if I ever want to receive my property.
No one is happy. And this is just me. There are about 25 million households in this country, where this mindless pantomime will be repeated every day.
This Royal Mail privatisation is not big, neither is it clever. It is petty, small-minded stupid ideologically driven inefficient waste of time and energy.
I back the postal strikes and I only wish that the whole country would go out on strike and stay out on strike until this miserable pathetic excuse for a Government resigns and calls a General Election.
And I'm a green green, a limey, not a watermelon. The Coalition Government drove me to this.
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