Thursday 25th January - a rant because I'm rather cross

 Readers who have been following my adventures in needlework over the past two years doing an exchange with Ang will realise that I will have an interest in the goings on with the Royal Mail (let along the monumental scale of the current Sscandal and ruination of people's lives unfolding day by day with the Post Office system).

We have been successfully posting packages to each other roughly every four weeks with the latest additions to our shared embroideries / cross stitch projects. Only once has a package been delayed.... and it turned up eventually.

Over the past few years we have all watched as prices for postage go up, and services go down. A bit like the way everything in the supermarkets from chocolate bars to the number of sheets on loo rolls is reducing as the prices rise.

Today I read an article about how the Royal Mail was seriously planning to cut the number of postal deliveries. Starting with stopping Saturday deliveries (if you get what I mean!). Then I read about propossls to reduce deliveries to three days a week.

The thing is, the Royal Mail is desperately struggling to balance the books... since 'open season' was declared on mail delivery, surprise surprise, all the lucrative parts of the business that used to subsidise the more costly services (delivering to rural or remote places, for example) the whole enterprise was bound to start losing money.

It's the last sentence in this paragraph from the article that brought me to the boil...

Since when are dividends paid out before all liabilities are settled?. Isn't this exactly how various privatised industries (think water, for example) have got into such an under invested state?

This the closing paragraph of The Guardian article

It does seem to me that the current structure is not working... at least, it's not working for us.. but hey, what do I know? I'm just a customer....

I'm going to find some chocolate.