What time do you get your mail ?

[salymap]

Not all posties are perfect. I have several different people; one is a real union type who gave me a letter that was not for me. I explained the situation and asked him to take it back. He wouldn't and said I must redirect it myself and put it in the box as I had received it.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not all posties are perfect. I have several different people; one is a real union type who gave me a letter that was not for me. I explained the situation and asked him to take it back. He wouldn't and said I must redirect it myself and put it in the box as I had received it.

This can be annoying - especially if the correct addressee is down the other end of the same street. I once took the letter in question to the correct address, and rang on the bell, to be greeeted by a charming Indian lady, who asked if my name was ** ******? to which I said yes - whereupon she said, "Ah, we have several letters I've been storing up with your name on. I'll just go and get them for you"

Our postie is a delightful chap. "Lovely up here, innit", he said to me when I first moved in, "just listen"... "I can't hear anything" I answered. "Yeh, that's what I mean" he replied. Nowsadays he has no time to stop. I was walking behind him the other day, on my way to the shops as he was doing his deliveries. Believe me, I walk pretty fast, but there was no way I could keep up with him withoug actually running. Wherever I see post persons they are rushing about everywhere. I'm not surprised your postie is a real union man, saly; good for him - I think they work them too hard.

Ahem

[ahinton]

Do you live in Hereford, or in Herefordshire? If the former I would be astonished if the nearest post box was 2.5 km away.

Herefordshire, obviously. otherwise my remark would not apply, as you appreciate; to the south west of the city, as it happens, some 11km from its centre.

[barber olly]

I think that it's high time that it was not privatised but closed down.

I can see that your experience of the service is not good, but for someone living in a rural area your comment is really sort-sighted. Privatisation of what we should regard as a national treasure, is a travesty. Rural areas are likely to suffer more than most from this, when the cheaper to run city-based services have been creamed off. Fortunately our village post office here in West Cornwall survived the last government's axe. When I recently posted a jif-pack containing a CD to the Shetlands for 92p I thought what value, what a services. ahinton think carefully about what you wish for!

[Flosshilde]

Absolutely agree. To think that a service that delivers something to an address getting on for 1000 miles away for 92p is overpriced is absolute nonsense.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Herefordshire, obviously. otherwise my remark would not apply, as you appreciate; to the south west of the city, as it happens, some 11km from its centre.

What's that in real money?

[barber olly]

What's that in real money?

Yes, metrication in the UK is a wonderful thing isn't it - our road signs are in miles, we think in miles, but we buy our petrol/diesel by the litre. It is not charged by the gallon because we'd probably freak out at the cost per gallon, similarly we are quoted car consumption in mpg so we think of it comparatively but never really work out how much it costs per mile. Would not it be a good idea for the manufacturers who want us to buy their economical cars to quote consumption in a more meaningful miles per litre? I know this is a digression from the debate on the postal service but maybe something worth airing with other grumps on these boards.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And if you want to run a competitive mile, you would probably do it in Oslo.

[ahinton]

And if you want to run a competitive mile, you would probably do it in Oslo.

...where, when last I was in the coutry of which it's the capital, people spoke of "Norwegian miles", a measure that, whilst not formally accepted as an offical measure, works out at 10km, as I was told.

Why Britain persists in promoting confusion by means of its half-hearted acceptance of metrication I really do not know; it was bad enough in the days before it accpted it at all, but the present mixed bag situation is considrable worse and has probably arisen as fallout from the ridiculous nonsense about "conversion" that was all the rage when the country first adopted metric measure. Even today, some milk suppliers offer products in odd numbers of litres that correspond to whole numbers of pints. The dirivers' situation is perhaps the daftest of all, where our travelling distances should be shown on road signs and elsewhere in km and vehicle fuel consumtion in litres per kilometre and we should be driving on the right side o the road like almost everyone else in the world (this is one instance where the words "right" and "correct" happen to be synonymous) - and that's not intended as a dig at the left-handed amoung us. When I first attended school in Scotland just before reaching the age of four, I was taught metric measure before imperial measure, for the obvious and sensible reason that it conforms to the Arabic numeral system that we use and is therefore so much easier to understand and remember; even to this day, I find that I don't always recall correctly how many pints there are in a mile. Whoever permits this continued half-use of imperial measure in Britain ought to be hit hard over the head with a rod, pole or perch.

Anyway, back to the topic. 11km is around 7.5 miles, for anyone who really has to know. WHen I wrote that the Royal Mail service is "expensive", I meant in comparison to the alternatives in ost cases rather than per se; that said, the true average cost of, say, collecting, sorting and delivering a first class letter not exceeding 100g in wieght and conforming to whatever the maximum measurements for the basic service are comesw to several pounds - so why several pounds is not being charged suggests to me that the taxpayer is being prevailed upon to pay the difference between that and the actual charge that Royal Mail makes, otherwise the company would go bust overnight.

[barber olly]

[QUOTE=ahinton;102134
Anyway, back to the topic. 11km is around 7.5 miles, for anyone who really has to know. WHen I wrote that the Royal Mail service is "expensive", I meant in comparison to the alternatives in ost cases rather than per se; that said, the true average cost of, say, collecting, sorting and delivering a first class letter not exceeding 100g in wieght and conforming to whatever the maximum measurements for the basic service are comesw to several pounds - so why several pounds is not being charged suggests to me that the taxpayer is being prevailed upon to pay the difference between that and the actual charge that Royal Mail makes, otherwise the company would go bust overnight.[/QUOTE]

Tax-payers money well spent, but its a shame that so many so called private delivery services that charge cheaper rates and cream off the urban areas, rely on the Royal Mail to deliver to rural areas.

[Dave2002]

...where, when last I was in the coutry of which it's the capital, people spoke of "Norwegian miles", a measure that, whilst not formally accepted as an offical measure, works out at 10km, as I was told.

I guess these are the same as Swedish miles. They really threw me when I was told to go to a "nearby" town only 15 miles way (or so). I couldn't understand why it took several hours by train and a similar time by car. You get used to it eventually.

[vinteuil]

I guess these are the same as Swedish miles. They really threw me when I was told to go to a "nearby" town only 15 miles way (or so). I couldn't understand why it took several hours by train and a similar time by car. You get used to it eventually.

norwegian mile about 11.298 km ; swedish mile about 10.687 km ; danish mile about 7.5 km...

Makes the Irish mile ( 1.27 English miles ) almost pathetic by comparison...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile