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September 20, 2004
Postal crisis?
I read with interest and some amazement this week the news that because Royal Mail has "failed" to meet its target of delivering 96% of all First Class mail items by the next day, the Mail Service Regulator is planning to impose yet another massive fine on Royal Mail. To make it even more of an incentive to "improve" he is also considering throwing the delivery of mail open to the horde of commercial vultures who wish to "cherry pick" the bits that actually make money (normal letter delivery is actually subsidised by the delivery of parcels and other high cost/value items), no doubt an incentive to some minds, but it seems to me that this is yet another example of the lack of intelligence anywhere in Whitehall.
Given that the Royal Mail was "fined" £7.5 million last year for only achieving the delivery of 92.5% of the millions of first class mail items against a target of 96%, and had to deal with a major hole in its budgets as a result, I would say that they managed a near miracle to actually achieve the high level of delivery they did in this year. The £7.5 million "fine" resulted in their having to cut staff and undertake a major re-arrangement of their operations. The Mail Trains, certain sorting offices, and a number of other things have been cut to save money (another Whitehall wheeze!), and they still managed to get over 90% of the first class letter post delivered the next day. And this according to those Whitehall cretins is a "failure"?!
Show me a single postal service anywhere in the world that can deliver a letter to the other end of the country within 18 hours of its being posted - and I'll eat my Acubra! Very, very few even have a "First Class" and a "Second Class" letter rate, and even fewer guarantee much more than that the letter will get there sometime! I have just returned from Romania, and Post Cards I posted on the second day of my 7 day visit have still not reached the UK. I have been home for 5 days - yet I can (and have) posted letters to Europe and had acknowledgement with 4 days that the recipient had received it. From experience I know that even the German postal service does not promise to deliver "the next day" and does not have anything like the target to achieve that is imposed by the Whitehall Wankers to achieve. Elsewhere in the world there are postal services where users consider they are lucky if the letter is delivered this year - never mind next day!
Perhaps one of the Whitehall Cretins would care to explain exactly how they think imposing a massive "fine" on a publically funded service is going to help "improve" it? The money has to come out of the already limited budget they have for operating, so how, precisely, will this dramatic reduction in operating budgets bring an "improvement"? Equally, perhaps they would care to explain how handing over the profitable parts of mail delivery to private contractors (who will certianly not deliver letters to the outer Hebrides at 28p per item) will improve the delivery of the non-profitable parts?
Or is it just me that is missing the apparently blindingly obvious?
Posted by The Gray Monk at September 20, 2004 07:48 AM
Comments
Perhaps the answer in to fine the senior managers/board. The fined money could then be returned to the Royal mail, meaning no overall loss of revenue, but a massive incentive to those with most responsibility.
Posted by: James F Hamilton at September 20, 2004 11:30 AM
I suspect an even better wheeze would be to fine the Treasury and the Minister responsible for Postal Services. That might focus minds!
Posted by: The Gray Monk at September 20, 2004 04:32 PM
Er... So let me get this straight. The Mail Service Regulator is taking the position of "we're going to cut your funding until you can do everything we're asking you to do," right? Talk about world class stupidity.
We have similar (though not so drastic) problems over here in America. People complain about the mail all the time, but for 37 cents you can drop a letter in a mailbox here in Alabama and have it delivered to California (incredible in and of itself that it's so cheap), usually within 2-3 days (even more incredible).
The problem is, our modern society has us all so spoiled that we expect everything and we expect it now and we don't understand why it isn't all just given to us on a silver platter.
Sheesh.
Posted by: Russell Newquist at September 20, 2004 08:43 PM
The U.S postal system isn't too bad. Even if it's a govenerment company. They don't have silly targets to meet like yours, but they do have to break-even I think it has improved service since that happened. the whole next day delivery is just stupid but when you set goals like that you are setting the Royal Mail up to fail. I think that is what whitehall was shooting for.
Posted by: skipjack at September 23, 2004 11:14 AM