of tomphippen.com

They’re closing the Delivery Office in Whitchurch with all collections going to Basingstoke instead. Which is becoming a biennial spring event (they tried to close it April 05 and May 07¹), but this time they seem to mean it.

Obviously the biggest reason this is a bad idea is that will inconvenience me, but other people will be screwed over by it. There’s a high percentage of old people in Whitchurch, it’s not especially convenient for them to carry items from the Delivery Office up the hill or up Micheldever Road. So having to get the bus/train to Basingstoke, get another bus to the Hospital, walk to the Basingstoke Office, collect the item, then get back will be a massive inconvenience in time (it would take a minimum of 2 hours for a young person who lived next to the train station).

And the posties will have to do a 24 mile round trip to pick up the bags of mail to post (currently a postman drives a van with the bags to the other postie’s houses)². Adding time and costs (there are allegedly going to be no job cuts, so the only cost saving is not turning on the heating and lights at the office.) to the delivery. And the parcels will be delivered in multiple small vans from Basingstoke, rather than a large van taking it to the Whitchurch office and small vans delivering from there. So there will be an extra cost to both the bottom line and the environment.

And on the subject of costs, this will add a huge cost to people who don’t get free bus passes (as well as the time mentioned earlier), either there’s 24 miles of fuel + wear & tear on the car. Or a minimum of £7.50 for people like me who have to use public transport. And public transport isn’t possible for larger objects which will require blagging a lift.

It’s a difficult pill to swallow when the Tories, sorry, New Labour are privatising a huge chunk to raise money, increasing the price of stamps, bullying workers for moving slower than Usain Bolt and cutting services (which is probably why Mum’s mothers day present took so long to arrive).

The solution to this and the Royal Mail’s other problems is probably having an actual left-wing party in power, but in the short term maybe I should cut out the middle man. Rather than buying stuff of amazon and having to spend time and money to get the stuff when I miss the delivery I should just buy in Basingstoke and carry the stuff home.

More Links

• George Young
• Third Class Mail – the petition to keep the office open

¹ you know things are bad when I’m linking to a Tory website without making snarky remarks
² and presumably there’d be a 24 mile round trip at the end of the day to return the empty bags to be refilled