Mantelpiece decorated with computer printouts

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From: Douglas Hartley, Irving Terrace, Clayton, Bradford.

MANUFACTURERS of greetings cards would not be pleased to read Colin Philpott's dismissal of the Post Office as a "dinosaur of the pre-digital age" (Yorkshire Post, March 18).
Did his computer-literate relative send or receive any Christmas cards last December? In two years' time, with Mr Philpott's scheme in place and Royal Mail no more, will that good woman be decorating her mantelpiece with folded, colourless computer p
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rintouts, celebrating her 90th birthday?

Greetings cards became widely used, I think, after the introduction of the penny post in Victorian days. The word "Victorian" is itself a term of abuse in the mouths of modernisers. Zealous environmentalists may regret the amount of thick paper thrown away after the Christmas season; but cards remain popular, as displays in stationers' stores will confirm.

It is so in other countries. My wife has known a young German woman for many years. On her recent birthday, an attractive, floral "Zum Geburtstag" card came by post from Horstedt.

Mr Philpott arrogantly instructs pensioners, instead of walking round to the post office, to put their financial affairs wholly in the hands of those organisations recently proven so trustworthy – the banks; no doubt also to pay their bills by direct debit.

The Ministry of Work and Pensions tried the same trick. But millions of pensioners registered their preference for the Post Office Card Account. The Government retracted.

Letter writing is described as outdated in the estimation of "the younger, the better-educated" and (!) of those living "further south". The digital age, we are told, offers every advantage. There were, in the past, anonymous or "poison pen" letter sent. But the potential of the internet for evil communication and influence is far more insidious. We read of young people absconding their home, lured and seduced through internet "chat rooms".

I have it. Mr Philpott plans to mount, in his National Media Museum, an exhibition: an aged, Madame Tussaudesque figure, crouched over a kitchen table; flat cap beside him to make plain his northern roots; ink pot before him; quill pen in his hand – "The Letter Writer of Auld Lang Syne".