A Bee concerning Royal Mail

Royal Mail again!

The privatised mess that is Royal Mail continues to exasperate the public.  The need to feed the shareholders, paid £400 million of the £700 million profit past year, is destroying the service, or at least what remains.  The man at the top, paid £750,000 a year, has proved to be incompetent, sat in front of a Commons Committee and failed twice to appear in control of his company or his knowledge of said company.  The man on the street delivering mail has less control, less money, and all the grumbles this man at the top avoids.

Chris, our postman, works a three day week.  This is quite common, and gives employment to men over 50 keeping them busy and offering a decent public service.  The problem is while Christ covers Monday to Wednesday the rest of the week is covered by overtime.  Royal Mail no longer allow overtime, unless the entire 'walk' is finished!  So, nobody delivers here Thursday to Saturday.

My beautiful, wise and clever niece posted a packet containing family stuff to me.  It had not arrived.  This of course is the Easter Weekend so Friday and Monday are holidays.  WOB, the book shop, posted a packet of three cheap books to me and told me it had been collected.  Indeed, on Saturday night a Royal Mail man logged the packet into the system informing me it was with them.  This morning I checked the tracker and found the packet lodged in Chelmsford, awaiting forwarding to the sorting office.  Nothing today thought I.

At around 11:30 Chris rang the bell, offered me two packets, one from WOB and one from my niece. He also mentioned that the ban on overtime continues, his 'walk,' one I used to do, has increased in size by the addition of yet another street!  Madness!  He has not got enough time as it is to finish the 'walk.'

This results in certain streets being left until tomorrow, which is actually a crime, not that the man at the top cares.  He also made clear that he is no longer allowed to log packets in the morning before delivery.  If he does this allows the customer to know he is arriving, but if they are out it has to be returned to the office.  By not logging it in the customer does not know they have tried to deliver and remains ignorant of the fiddle until they happen to be in.  Customer service, not since privatisation at Royal Mail.

At least I have some books on the shelf, and a pile of old letters and photographs to work through.

The Conservative Party ideology is based on privatising everything to save state money.  In the long run it destroys all services, social, transport and practical, enables some to make money from shares, their friends, and donations aplenty to arrive from those running private companies.  Corruption is the word.

Prisons, probation, railways, buses, Royal mail, DVLA, Passport Office, you name it, anything privatised it does not work, too few staff too many board members lining their pockets.  Has anything privatised worked?

And another thing, stamp prices.  Now I think £1:05 for a first class stamp is a bargain, as it ought to be at the destination overnight.  Under this regime, a good word, it is failing and price increase appear unjust to many.