Next-day delivery is the stuff of sci-fi

[Geezer]

Next-day delivery is the stuff of sci-fi
From The Times
December 22, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 379473.ece



Notebook
Michael Gove

Normally you have to read science fiction to glimpse a world where the impossible has been realised - time travel, space flight at warp speed, teleporting, etc. But for a true lurch into fantasy try Dickens or Trollope. These masters of Victorian fiction have created a parallel universe in their books in which something inconceivable in 21st-century Britain can, miraculously, happen every day. In their world they have something called the Royal Mail that enables letters to travel at speeds faster than four miles an hour. Theirs is an alternative reality where the first post arrives before dusk. Indeed theirs is a world so amazing that there are enough posts every day for one of them to actually be the first.

Listening to someone from the Royal Mail being interviewed on the radio at the weekend and apologising for the fact that Nasa can reach Pluto, X-Factor stars can move from being supernovas to black holes, and life on distant planets can emerge, evolve and face extinction, all in the time it now takes to deliver a Christmas card from Deal to Penge, I wondered how long I would have to wait before science fiction became science fact. And time travel gets invented. Because then I could go back to the reign of Queen Victoria and experience the unparalleled joy of posting a letter one day and knowing someone would receive it the next.

However, I was nudged out of my reverie by the reminder that it was indeed possible to send something through the post on Tuesday and be sure it arrived on Wednesday - if you use “special delivery”. Which is to say if you spend much, much more.

Far from feeling reassured this service existed, I was enraged at what I was being told. There used to be a service that guaranteed next day delivery. It was called the first class post. But now that's been downgraded to make way for “special delivery” - essentially the same service but now much more expensive.

This whole process - by which first class becomes second class, second class becomes message in a bottle and special delivery becomes a way of subsidising the chairman's handsome remuneration package and golf club membership is just another example of a trend the late, great Kingsley Amis identified - the great business principle of “Sod The Public”.

STP management practice involves charging more for the same product, or even for a lesser version, by rebranding it as deluxe, organic, classic, executive, limited edition, couture, bespoke, grass-fed, milk-fed or design-led. Classic (or even couture) examples of goods which are still sold in accord with STP principles, even in these credit crunch times, are scents, watches, brown spirits and contemporary jewellery. Watches in particular are elaborate devices for transferring money from the vain to the unscrupulous. There is no more point in spending more than £50 on a watch than there is in buying an extra limb or a spare heart. In chronography, as in life, two hands and one sound ticker is all you need.

Unless you're monitoring postal deliveries, in which case a sun dial and the patience of a saint might be more useful.

[Spedley]

What a load of bollocks.

[BELIAL]

What a load of bollocks.

Yes I heard the interview to,it was Crozier and when he finished the entire studio of journo's pissed themselves

[Thorby Bislam]

1: Is there a record of this interview ?

2: As over 90% of first class mail is delivered the following day, does this make us Time Lords ?

[brothermagrew]

1: Is there a record of this interview ?

2: As over 90% of first class mail is delivered the following day, does this make us Time Lords ?

Don't know about the Time Lords aspect, but we are what we are and bar none, we are the best mail carriers and exponents of delivery that the UK have ever had, of course that's only my opinion!

[BELIAL]

1: Is there a record of this interview ?

2: As over 90% of first class mail is delivered the following day, does this make us Time Lords ?

Try "listen again" ,most stuff is usually on there ,Today programme one day midweek .