Might Royal Mail get rid of the humble red postbox?

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This year I had five birthday cards and loads of Happy Birthdays on Facebook, which is all very lovely, but you can’t put them on your mantelpiece. I blame Vince Cable

The chap behind the counter in a small post office just told me some worrying news. Gradually our back-street urban postboxes (not those out in the country) are going to close, and we’ll just be left with the ones in front of post offices. No more plodding to the corner in your slippers to post a letter. It will be a long schlep to the nearest post office. First the red phone boxes disappeared, now the lovely red post boxes. Or perhaps they’ll stay there, but just be sealed shut. The postmaster didn’t know.

What a grim prospect. Was the postmaster sure? “Royal Mail is a private company now,” said he. “They’ve got no choice.”

I blame Vince Cable. He should never have flogged it off. He might have guessed what was coming, because who writes letters anymore? This year I had five birthday cards, and loads of “Happy Birthdays” on Facebook, which is all very lovely, but you can’t put them on your mantelpiece.

Perhaps the postmaster was wrong. I ask Royal Mail, just to be sure. Are they really going to close our charming, beautifully designed, tremendously useful post boxes? “No,” says the Royal Mail spokesperson sternly. “We have not announced any plans for mass closure.” And if I spot the odd closure, from vandalism or removal from private property, then I can complain.

I so want to believe it. But what does not announcing things mean, exactly? Since they already cut 6,500 box collections in a single year back in 2012, perhaps that’s saved them enough money. But you know me, I’m a worrier. Ofcom proposed in 2013 that we’ll “require fewer post boxes in high-density postcode areas”, and the Communication Workers Union went on strike last week over job losses and “the very future of the industry. Only 11% of post goes into and out of post boxes,” said their spokesperson. “We’re convinced that whatever is said [by Royal Mail], the number of boxes will fall.”

“Surely not!” said Pollyanna.