The postman never calls

on Saturdays, - that is likely to be the case.

Royal Mail is unable to fulfill its universal delivery, i.e. to every address at the same price, without making a loss. There are a number of reasons for this, including recent liberalisation allowing other deliverers to enter the market. A monopoly is always bad and the postal monopoly is no exception.

So, to reduce costs, having already cut Sunday collections they are now proposing to cut Saturday deliveries, and also be slightly less likely to deliver first class mail on the next day. (If there is no delivery on Saturday and Sunday, there is little point in sending mail first class on a Friday and hoping for next day delivery!)

But why retain the universal delivery, every address at the same price? It patently costs a great deal more to deliver to the Lord of the Manor in his isolated Manor House, unless he has bundles of mail every day, than it does to deliver to families in low rise flats.

Worse, insofar as the mail sent to families in flats is cheaper to deliver, those who write to them are in fact subsidising those who write to the Lord of the Manor. If senders and receivers are of the same income classes, we thus have the poorer subsidising the richer!

The old nationalised industries used to rule out cross subsidies. Why does Royal Mail continue to do so? Perhaps it's Europe insisting? Say no more!

If it costs so much to deliver to every isolated castle, farm and cottage, why should they not collect their mail from a central point? Ah, I forgot, post offices have often been removed!

We seem to be in a crazy world, where the principle of universalism means subsidising some at the expense of others and also of services which are deteriorating rapidly.

Is there are any surprise that many of us are sending e-mails and text messages rather than using snail mail? We are not helping the problem perhaps, but we are acting rationally.