It's better in Spain

Postal workers, who are threatening all sorts of troubles to anyone who dares suggest changes to their way of things (- surely a very conservative, reactionary workforce), have recently been boasting on a website about the Spanish practices in which they indulge.

They include going home early if they have finished a round, putting mail back into post boxes if they can't deliver it and pushing cards through the door, for householder collection, even if they have not contacted householders.

Bearing mind that we otherwise have a deteriorating service, presumably as management try to save costs, - fewer collections, none on Sundays or Bank Holiday Mondays, and a delivery service which reaches our house any time between 8.30 and 14.30, there will soon be some angry householders.

I use the post only when I cannot avoid it, - otherwise it's the internet and telephone, and I suspect that there are many others who do the same.

What Royal Mail needs is a dose of competition, which would drive out the inefficient and unwilling. Any monopoly is prone to this 'take it or leave it attitude'.