| The great age of the Post Office is past, here and indeed all over the world
Still, New Yorkers have their general post office. There is no substitute for a hand-made birthday card from a 6-year old to his gran. E-cards generally are cheap ways of expressing very little genuine emotion. Email may already be peaking because it's buried in junkmail and spam. Letters are not replaced by email and SMS, CD does not replace vinyl, BACS does not replace cheques, Kindle does not replace books. The underlying cultural myth is the disposable, impersonal, cheap replacement - consumerism. Letter volumes will certainly drop, but email was never going to replace all of it - a lot is now verbal transaction on mobiles, SMS and social networking which does not do the same thing as a letter. Technology does not displace the past, it coexists with it because it very rarely duplicates it. Isn't there a factory in China staffed by vietnamese workers and the company is paid by the chinese. Thank god for our innovative entrepreneurs and private enterprise genii. "for a lot of older people who are not internet savvy the post still remains important. Kind of you to say so. All will be replaced by SMSs with sentences like 'c u 4 latte LOL'. Last year I personally propped up the Post Office but now the end is nigh. The fact that I've been sending email since before Tim Berners-Lee invented the web will not save me - I send letters, so my claims to know a bit about IT fall on deaf ears. Worse, I use a fountain pen with green ink. It looks like Claude Shannon was right and information is going the way of all entropy - a random cosmic smear of meaningless spam. Are you mad author? The Post Office is where millions of pensioners still pick up their pensions, where millions of small businesses still take their mail at the end of their working day. "Letters may be on the wane, but with online shopping growing by the day, I'd have thought there was something to fill the gap for the PO, and then some. Right. It is true, I watch my post person provide the mail through rain or shine, snow or sleet. Anything official, we need the mail offices. Letters may be on the wane, but with online shopping growing by the day, I'd have thought there was something to fill the gap for the PO, and then some. Illuminating stuff Ian. Thanks for your article. And, simple letters, billions of them!!!! It aint gonna be disappearing in my lifetime. I work with huge logistic and mail company. I've forgotten the details. They will have to sell the serfs labour as I believe is happening elsewhere in the world. That was a very bad decision. Total Rubbish. People sent packerts, books, letters with enclousures, legal documents etc etc by post. Also, Internet Cards are not the same as normal cards. Postal Service is thriving in Japan, a very technological society. The first post office I ever knew was rather like that: a shop that sold postcards and balls of string and stamps that were torn carefully by the village postmistress, Mrs B, from a large book. " I must have been nine, but I stumped up threepence every week until I reached the grand total of half a crown, which Mrs B converted into a phial of so-called perfume that smelled sweeter even than Californian Poppy. "I think you should join my Christmas club," she said one day, "then you can buy a present for your mum. The fourth and youngest was my closest friend for a while, and so I got to know Mrs B well. Also, as her clients noticed, she never missed a trick. She was small and plump and always trailed the sickly whiff of Ambrosia Creamed Rice, many tins of which were stacked in her larder. And it's not deserving of hundreds of millions 12 months in taxpayers' funds when its rivals are making no such demands of me. the Post Office's confusing division into the separate identities known as Parcelforce, Royal Mail and Post Office Counters, It's not the Post Office that is divided, confusingly or otherwise. Royal Mail, Parcelforce Worldwide and Post Office Counters have Royal Mail Group Ltd as their parent firm. I've opted out, including unaddressed junk - there are two kinds of junk and it's actually exceedingly difficult to get rid of both, because the PO make it difficult This is not a business that appears to know what it is doing. By comparison, I can sign the national organ donor register online in less than one minute. So the courrier companies take over and make a killing while the national flate rate mail service is left to jack its prices up and try to compete with commercial bulk mail cream skimmers. So yes in theory but not for long in practice. Youve got to laugh! :). A lot of things the baby boomers, and the older generations in this country have enjoyed, and taken for granted, see such things as a their divine right. I'm sure a great number of countries wish to have anything like such a priviledge as a Universal Postal Service. I personally do not take such things for granted, because I do not live in the 1950's. my incoming post virtually never has a stamp on it , its all either TNT or franked , they ve also long given up on putting a price on the stamps Its always busy as there's always someone faffing about at the head of the queue , you are able to see from their body language they are there for the long haul Yep. I think I get your drift here!. Not certain how Esperanto got involved here ? Perhaps the fact that our founder William Stead died on the Titanic 100 years ago ? Yours confusedly You may want to conduct some research into your theory! The mail service has been privatised, and many 'small businesses', and medium and small companies use TNT or UK Mail, who operate their own sorting offices, leaving it up to Royal Mail to deliver as they have the operating rights -watch this space, Royal Mail is due to be sold. Take a quick look next time you get a small business letter, and you'll find that it will rarely have a 'Royal Mail' frank on it. The author may not be deluded, or 'mad', he is writing very factually about the UK postal service as it stands. More and more post offices are closing, and the author may not be deluded in quite rightly concluding that the service as we know it, will eventually disappear. How narrow minded; you know the cost of everything and the the necessity of nothing. They are an abused symbol for trust, something much needed today more than ever before but badly damaged by poor leadership and incompetent governments. I use email routinely, but I also use letters routinely. My mother was touched, but also irritated that Mrs B had persuaded a little boy to waste his pocket money. 148 comments, displaying first My comment's in the post. The post office have sealed their own fate , by increasing their charges they have ensured that every person under 55 will endeavor to send at least 1 "internet greeting " for birthdays and chrimbo Yeah and the printed book is dead too, right? Thanks to the internet I receive more post now than I have ever done in the past. No sentimentality here. If it doesn't make profit, adios. If it does make profit, to the private sector it goes. There is no society. We sold it. Everything is being thrown at the alter of a so called free market that is neither free nor democratic. alter of a so called free market that is neither free nor democratic. What's democratic about posting letters? . A cheap post brought the country into more of a unit and part of something. I was a postie for the last 4 years Brits love the Posties they really do. They were more socially aware 150 years ago than now. Parcels, you say, since we all now shop online so much? Well maybe. It's not a national institution. Cherish it? Getting rid of the USO will be right at the top of the 'To Do' list of whoever takes it over. The fuckin dog bit me. I've seen these post boxes existing and still in use globally, earliest is Edward VII. post office is dead? so how is all the stuff I'm buying online going to get to my front door? what a truly daft column One thing that has put the boot in is the pricing scheme adopted by post offices that varies the price of a stamp Depending on the size of the mailpiece and its thickness. Mail pricing is also bizarre with overseas pricing varying by country. Its easier to just send an email. The genius behind Rowlands was the one-price stamp. The fact it hasn't fallen apart completely is due to the superhuman efforts of those who work it who still believe in the service's mission. We're trending back to this model,private carriers and all, and not surprisingly the service is becoming spotty, expensive and hit and miss. Don't know what we have got until it's gone sort of thing. I appreciate your experience in The Royal Mail. Compare with Japan Post The Royal Mail provides now a days a very bad service. People do not write much letter on account of Internet ; they also do not use much land based telephone on account of Internet. However, Post Office serves many other purposes and that can not be replaced by either Internet or mobile phones. Certain services like Rly, post Office, hospitals, schools, universities, police, army cannot be judged by profit or loseses; these have to be financed from general taxes, as these are Public Goods. If you separate out Postal services from other more prifitable areas like Postal banks, insurance services, it alone can not survive to provide essential public services to the remote or unprofitable areas. However, this is exactly what the Sons of Mrs Thatchers are doing in many countries so that ultimately Postal Service can be declared as unprofitable and will be taken over by FedEx, which costs a fortune but provides horrible service. I do not know which is worse - those who run up a white flag on behalf of our cherished services and institutions, or those neo-liberal spivs who seek to destroy them in the first place. All in all, a pretty shameful article. The obvious point is that with on-line shopping (some people never go into a shop) there is a serious future for post. The un-obvious point which I am extremely surprised you have missed is that for a lot of older people who are not internet savvy the post still remains important. Business still requires post. These contain slips signed by the clients confirming my jobs. The agencies will not accept scans or faxes, only originals. I also need to send out documents bearing my official seal and signature. I also receive considerable amounts of merchandise via online shopping. The great age of the Post Office is past, here and indeed all over the world |
Sunday, 8 April 2012
The great age of the Post Office is past, here and indeed all over the world
