Mount Pleasant
The largest postal site in London, if not UK is Mount Pleasant.
Years ago, when I lived in the Barbican and worked at Time Sharing in Great Portland Street, I used to cycle past the site to get between the two locations. I could never understand, why most of this valuable site is just a ground-level car-park. The site is still mainly undeveloped in an area of London, where property prices are sky-high.
If you take other large organisations, who used to have large premises of this sort in central London, they have closed and redeveloped them. As an example, a lot of London rail stations are new and spectacular, with or without offices, shops and apartments. These developments have enriched the environment and the organisations that owned the sites.
So why have Royal Mail not closed these massive sites in central London and developed perhaps four large sorting centres on the M25, with just smaller delivery offices in the centre?
It surely must be a much more efficient way of doing things. Or am I talking garbage?
The union will say I am. But then if you start with new sorting centres, you’ll probably break the power of the unions to hold everybody to ransom.
On the other hand, as mail volumes are dropping substantially, it is the management of Royal Mail’s responsibility to provide an efficient service suitable for the new circumstances.
My post is getting through, but I have a feeling that the junk mail that goes straight in the bin is not being sent. So perhaps, we’re seeing a benefit of these silly strikes.
Postal Strikes Don’t Work
I’m just putting the new tax disc on my Lotus Elan. Incidentally, for the first time in some years, I’m taxing it through the winter, as I need the sun. I just need a new warm coat to go with the car. I don’t think I’ll buy it in yellow though.
I renewed the tax disc on-line after I received the demand in the post. I actually did it last Thursday in the middle of the postal strike and got the disc in the post on Saturday. So despite the two-day postal strike, the mail got through, perhaps a day late. But then it’s only the 28th of October and because of the strikes, the DVLA have given us all another five days. I also had a letter saying that.
I don’t know what percentage of vehicles are now taxed on-line, but in July 2007, Computer Weekly said it was over a third. I would be surprised if it was less than that now.
So how much has on-line purchase of tax discs cost the Post Office?
A lot!
I have a feeling too, that since the strikes of last week, the volume of junk mail I have been receiving is down.
Are these enemies of the environment coming to their senses?
I hope so!
The Facts Behind Royal Mail
We all know that the Post Office and Royal Mail are in trouble.
But what are the true facts behind the problems? This analysis on the BBC web site contains some interesting facts.
For a start, it always used to be the case that mail volumes followed the economy. But not any more and now, there is a large decline in volumes, due to technology, which has created a large gap in the traditional forecast. We now know, that if the economy picks up again, there will be no bounce in mail volumes.
I’ve said before that nearly everything I get now in the post, is either junk mail or a few bills. I probably get about five of the latter a month and about five pieces of junk that go straight in the bin every day. Only on birthdays and at Christmas, do I get a substantial amount of mail.
As the service gets more unreliable, I suspect that mail volumes will decline even further.
Many of the companies I deal with on the Internet, used to send catalogues. Many now do not. I even had a local charity send me a nice card yesterday, saying that they were moving to e-mail and would I sign up. So even the 59% of mail which makes up business to home letters is seriously under threat.
Suppose that this declined by half, which I suspect will happen in the next couple of years, as businesses will see no point in large amounts of direct mail. This would actually reduce total mail volumes by 30%. No business can suffer this sort of decline, without large amounts of industrial strife or insolvency.
Whichever way you look at it, the outlook for Royal Mail is grim.
You could also say that it’s grim for the taxpayer, as we will have to pick up the pension deficit.
Turkeys Vote in Time for Christmas
I have very friendly and good postmen here. They put the mail on the hall table and collect anything that needs to go. They have time for a quick chat and they check on the elderly etc.
But we’ve now got the postal unions pushing for a national strike.
The question is do we really need a postal service.
If I look at the post we get here, perhaps two letters a week are important. I get very few bills to pay and those could all be sent by e-mail. As to cheques in, I get none, as most pay their bills by bank transfer. So it would not affect my business if I didn’t get any mail at all.
I buy a lot of goods on mail order and that seems to get through pretty efficiently. In fact there has been a dramatic improvement over the last few years, as the delivery companies have improved their systems and I think the recession has given them a more intelligent and polite class of driver.
So if we had a long postal strike, I don’t think I would even notice. I certainly wouldn’t miss the tonnes of environmentally unfriendly junk mail, that is sent. Most of it incidentally to my late wife.
It is sad to say I wouldn’t miss the mail, but in a way it’s progress, as we increasingly rely on phones, e-mail and the Internet.
In a couple of years, I suspect that I could make do on a twice-weekly delivery for all the non-urgent personal stuff like cards and the very occasional letter.
How Did They Do That?
On Saturday evening, I ordered a copy of the Dorling Kindersley guide to Brussels from Amazon. The time on the confirming e-mail is 20:15 and I had another one on Sunday at 14:45 to say the book had been dispatched.
It arrived with the post this morning. At least Newmarket is not on strike.
I thought too, that the Royal Mail didn’t accept letters and parcels on Sunday. They obviously do for Amazon.
Postal Strikes
I’m not sure whether I’ll get any mail today, as there is a postal strike in Suffolk.
But does it really matter? How often do you actually get a real letter these days? And when did you last get a postcard?
I think I’ve had about four in the last seven days and two of those could actually have been sent by e-mail, but thankfully some people like to be personally. The other two were a water bill, which asked on the outside if we’d like an electronic bill and a letter from the NHS enclosing a bowel caner test kit.
I think the last would be a difficult one to do by e-mail, but on the other hand it isn’t very urgent.
I used to know a guy who ran BT’s telephone service in East Anglia and he told me that every interruption in the Royal Mail service moves business away to other methods like phone and e-mail. It rarely comes back.
So what would happen, if we had a postal service that only delivered mail twice or even once a week?
In my view. Nothing!
The Anonymous Widower 