General Chat

I posted the flight information for aged BIL's trip out to Venezuela 8 days ago FIRST CLASS, the letter had to go from West Wales to London. He phoned me this morning it still hasn't arrived!!

He leaves at the end of this week. I now have had to email to another family member In Essex so they can print it off and give it to him.

Is it just my postal service that is dreadful?

x

There have been strikes on and off across the country Sue, and there is a huge backlog to catch up on. It's probably sitting in a sorting office in London.

It's the individual area strikes that have led up to the full strike action called for later this week across the country, so don't hold your breath....

Great!!! I know he has made the trip a few times before but I always like him to have the full details on paper!!!

I have insurance forms to send on the 21st so I guess I'll have to fax them too. My insurers are always looking for an excuse not to pay each month :-((

Lynda, our usual postie has changed area, we now have one who seems to turn up when he likes. I'm sure if he doesn't have too many letters for our particular area in the village he saves them up till he does!

x

yep strike action again...you and your sodding unions Suesue...

My OH has worked for the Post Office for years, so my feelings about the postmen's grievances are quite predictable. However, although they have little opportunity but to strike: there will be job losses either way; I can't help but fear that this will be the miners' strike all over again - and we know what happened there!

Last time they came out we went with them....hmmmmmmm

Fortunately Norwich hasn't been involved in the series of one-day strikes, so we still get deliveries every day, somewhere between 9.30am and 2.30pm, but Peterborough was involved in all of them, and that is one of the places there is a backlog.

I can see where the grievances are, and we should support our posties, or lose them, but on the other hand, something has to give in the post office system, it's simply not working as it is, and they are losing heavily to other parcel delivery companies. They have to become competitive.

To do so, they should be consulting those on the front line though, as they are the ones who know first hand where the changes need to be made.

I don't think it will turn into another on the scale of the miners strike, but they are whispering about a 'winter of discontent', and that is quite possible.

Listening to part of the news on this.... gentleman saying it was his opinion that "the customers would walk with their feet " LOL I bet he wished he hadn't said that ;)

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PMSL I imagine he meant VOTE with their feet LOL..

lol Teresa... i did feel for him .

I have got in the habit of watching the subtitles also , when we moved here the tv was in place and it was set for text for the hard of hearing, almost instantaneous voice to text ( done by computer?) ... throws up some great phrases . my recent favourite on the news was about the take over of a failing school...

Voice..." In the first week 15 pupils have been excluded"
Text ...." In the first week 15 pupils have been exploded"
lol

xx

Just think "Crosier" he made a mess of the FA.and was bought in to ruin the post office,they have to deliver mail for private mail companies at less than the cost it would normally be charged at. thats not business thats suicide,curtosy of this Government .**M**.

lol Rose, I could cheerfully wish for a few union reps to explode at the moment.

x

Its a pain just now,,

am waiting for a book from London to send off to OZ which has family members in................., eveything to go with it is gathering dust,

I think it'll end up getting there 2010 or2011,,,,,,,,,,,!!!grrrrr

but posties have my sympathy,:}

I don't really know all the ins and outs, not enough to know whether the postmen have a reason to strike. However, I have personally always been against strikes, they seem to cause more problems than they solve always. I can't help feeling that, because small businesses will go to the wall if there is a strike and they don't find alternative means, postmen will suffer in the long run because there wont be a postal service to save. No matter how badly off they feel they are, and they may be right, there are people all over the country having lost their jobs, the country is in a recession, businesses rely on the post and will go down, causing more job losses. The postmen are not going to have the goodwill of the people.

Sue, ours has really gone downhill in the last few years. Too few postmen covering too big an area. So we get it late and it's unreliable.

Ann, I do have a lot of sympathy for small businesses with things like this - I work for one and my family runs one. But I disagree that the postmen will lose the goodwill of the people - I think many people are sympathetic to the way the PO treats its staff these days and the only power they have is to withdraw labour. I do agree that this could be the beginning of the end for the post office but personally I think the management are to blame.

Oh certainly David, the management are to blame but it is the postmen who will suffer, not the management, they will be given something else to mess up and will have their payoffs etc. postmen will lose their jobs if there is no work for them. Management rarely suffer if there is a strike, it is the general public who suffer.

Sorry, a PS. I think if I lost my job because the business had gone down because of the postal strike, I would not be magnanimous enough to say 'that's OK chaps, I agree with you striking even if my family don't now have a breadwinner". So I do think they will lose the goodwill of at least some of the people.

I don't suppose I would be either, Ann. I would have thought though that a lot of small businesses could manage in other ways - account transfers and so on. Either way, not good for the Post Office.

Perhaps if businesses didn't use the postal service to deliver all the crap mail we get each week the mail service would be able to carry more 'real' mail.

Personally I could do without all the junk we get plus all the utter crud that's tucked inside our TV magazine.

If I want to know what Somerfield are offering this week I will go and look in the store!!!

Make businesses either target their market through 'opt in' schemes or force them to use a private delivery service.

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I get very little junk mail Sue, other than that in various magazines, that I could do without of course. I do get some put through the door by other delivery men (not post office) but only a couple of bits a week from the postman - I have opted out though so that makes a difference.