Lucy Mangan: The post office must not die!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... ucy-mangan" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

'Sometimes, when no one's looking, I hug my stamps'

I feel jittery. Insecure. Discombobulated. My natural serenity – which, although it can customarily be more accurately compared with the muddy waters of a roadside puddle than the smooth spread of water in a dappled woodland pool, is still a valuable asset – has been disturbed.

As I type this, you see, we are entering the second week of national strikes by the Royal Mail, after months of regional disruption. The weekly stipend I send my sister in Bristol because she's bigger than me has been going astray. Ditto the food parcels my great-auntie sends me from Macclesfield so that I don't have to eat any of "that foreign muck" as she calls anything produced farther south than the town hall. Ditto the weekly messages of support and encouragement I have sent my father ever since my sister and I left home.

Adam Crozier, chief executive of the Royal Mail, and Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication Workers Union, are arguing about the nitty-gritty of precisely where one man's "modernisation" stops and another man's "unfair working practices" begin and Peter Mandelson is slithering through its corridors like an evil serpent, looking for vulnerable heels to spike with his privatisation poison as if the Royal Mail were just another business. But it's not, it's not.

Personally I envisage the Royal Mail as a glowing red web stretching across the land (it is always night time in my Royal Mail imaginings. I do not know why), like a giant safety net that would, if the country were suddenly turned upside down, catch everything of importance before it fell and smashed to bits on the backs of the turtles we all balance on.

It's either that or a pet. Yes, that's it – the Royal Mail sits somewhere between a loving, faithful pet, asking infinitely less of us than we ask of it (and can it really be coincidence that a can of cat food is roughly the price of a couple of stamps? I think not!) and a safety net in my, and the national, psyche. It is also part grandmother-in-a-tartan-shawl-sitting-at-the-seaside, an island-wide smell of fresh-baked bread, an invisible hand at the small of our collective back gently helping us up and over the otherwise tiring foothills of life, Anglicanism with red rubber bands. It is a cultural grace note.

Without it, life becomes not just that bit crappier on a practical level (I will for ever mourn the passing of the six secondhand volumes I had just bought via Amazon, eBay and Abebooks before this whole thing kicked off and which I must now accept have gone to the great non-sorting office in the sky or, even less accessibly, Dartford) but on a deeper level, too.

It still binds us together. It is the only national institution we can still depend on. The police are rubbish. The NHS has been stolen from us, stripped and sold for parts. Terry Wogan's retiring. Everything's buggered. It is literally the only way you can take part in national life for a price that is still measured entirely in pence. Sometimes, when no one's looking, I hug my stamps.

It is the only remaining spur to the childish imagination. I was born too late for anything interesting – apothecaries, chandlers, flintknapping, dying in a workhouse. The only thread of continuity I could spy, connecting me to my parents, my grandparents and books that told of times even earlier than the latter could recall, the only institution that still had some vibrancy and texture to it, that was still redolent of grandeur, tradition, efficiency and confidence was the post office. It must not die. We may not consciously recognise the fact, but it is our last communal pleasure. Without it, the country will be turned upside down and all you will hear is the sound of ancient treasures being smashed to smithereens, while the turtles turn black, unblinking eyes up at us and shake their ancient heads from side to sorrowful side.

[Post Off]

Yeah, riiight. The police are rubbish? Surely not all? I mean, that would be like saying that all postmen are rubbish... And the NHS has been stolen from us -- maybe?

All I know, is that the real world is dependent on whomever is calling the shots, and who is laughingly allowing the everyday normals (the general public) to get away with what is considered (over time) 'not-so-awful, or doable'! Plus, the make-believe world in which all the true evils and and fantasies can live -- a place where at some point we would all want to stay a-whiles. The real world must truly be awful, then? But this article, however, seems to want to concatenate both worlds into one. It's kind of nice, and it's kind of Harry Potterish, but it's missing something big -- big business, and human nature!

[fishtank]

but it's missing something big -- big business, and human nature

Royal Mail is big business ,it's so big it provides a living for 120,000 people and still turns a profit.
I think what you mean is obscenely profitable business.

Greed however,is perhaps natural but seldom humane.

[chunk]

and it's kind of Harry Potterish, but it's missing something big -- big business, and human nature!

I don't think its "missing" anything after all its really an article about feelings rather than analysis.

The lady says shes not happy with whats happened to all the other great British institutions,
everyday i get customers telling me how much they value the service ,
they support us and that they hate to see the service slipping away.
I'm reminded of the saying "an accountant is someone who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing".
which describes how government has failed to properly asses our worth to the UK .
easy to price the land an office sits on etc not so easy to put a value on 300years of history or
the professionalism of 100,000 postal workers.

[Post Off]

Erm, what I was trying to say was that this article is missing big business -- the ones that are now encircling above Royal Mail like vultures, while most people in small businesses will allow it to happen simply because they can't see further than their noses, which is understandable as some (those inflaming these forums) talk mostly a load of bollix.