Going Postal

Postage in Britain went up again this week, a lot of people are moaning about this, and pointing out that postal charges are going up at a rate of over twice that of inflation. However what most people forget is all the additional costs that the Post Office has to contend with, costs that other businesses do not have to worry about. For example:

CLOSING POST OFFICES Shutting down large quantities of post offices is not cheap, specially in rural areas where they are especially necessary. And it is not just the physical cost of shutting down the post office, there is the cost of making people redundant, particularly at a time of high unemployment when jobs are needed - this costs money.

LOOSING LETTERS Do you think your letters loose themselves? Of course not! Large quantities of incompetent staff have to be employed to miss-deliver, misplace, or simply dump a percentage of the post. And all these people have to be paid.

THEFT Don't forget the dishonest employees they have to deal with. Failing to perform proper checks when hiring people and refusing to check staff for stolen post is not free.

NOT BEING PREPARED FOR WINTER Winter comes round every year in Britain, and with it comes snow and ice. We all know this, we all prepare for it, but the Post Office has to spend money carefully ignoring this fact. They have to employ staff to ensure that they are not prepared for winter, staff who will be genuinely surprised when it gets a bit cold around November. This is the only way to make sure that none of their delivery vans are equipped for ice or snow. People this stupid are hard to find, not only do you have to spend a lot of money recruiting them, you also have to pay them a high salary to prevent them from being "head hunted" by the railway companies, airports, etc.

So before you start complaining about having to pay 46p just to send a single letter a few miles across the country, think about the high cost of incompetence at the Post Office. Stupidity and a general inability to do your job is not cheap. And you will have to pay for this if you want the Post Office to continue to offer the same level bad service that we have come to expect from them.