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As you may have seen and heard in National Media, Royal Mail is currently experiencing a number of wildcat strikes. The disruption of postal services is widespread. Thargs subscription droids will continue to process and mail out all subscriptions on time, but chances are, that your subs copies will take longer than usual to arrive. We know how much you all rely on your weekly dose of thrillpower and, like you, hate it when the thrill suckers strike. Despite the problems of the Post Office, Denise and the rest of the droidlets continue to beaver away on your behalf. Your patience is appreciated.

Sack the lot of them!

Up the workers!

No!  Sack them all- especially the ones with dodgy shirts and ludicrous artistic sense!

"Up the workers!"

:o)

Buggers.

Kill 'em all!

Just been on the news.. they are talking about starting to seal postboxes tomorrow and the backlog could take 'weeks if not months' to clear

Just in time for the X-mas card season, you mean?

I'm telling you- the fools will be striking themselves out of jobs.  It's not like the good old days when there was no real competition.

There's a very real possibility that the Royal Mail could go under and it won't be your humble postie who's first in line for the payouts if that happens...

Proudhuff the ball is in your court! Defend your fellow posties.

It's when other places start joining in it'll get worse.
Nationalise it, pay them a decent wage and allow it make make a loss. Better to provide a vital service centrally than risk it screwing everything up like it seems is going to happen.

Can I just ask, have any other non-subs had trouble finding the prog this week? I've been to two newsagents I know always have it, but with no joy. Is it something to with the postal strike, or have all branches of Smiths decided that stocking "Jackie Chan Adventures" is more viable?

Gives me an excuse to start subscribing, anyway.

Yep, I had a problem with mine. My newsagent puts it by for me and it only came in this afternoon.

Has anybody got to the bottom of why the posties are actually striking? Not the ones in London (isn't that something to do with London waiting?) I mean the ones in Kent, something to do with a worker who was sacked but has now been reinstated and that is still not good enough.

Anybody?

There's a very real possibility that the Royal Mail could go under and it won't be your humble postie who's first in line for the payouts if that happens...

Just to chuck in a bit of inside info - I had a long talk with the head of DeutschePost UK, and according to him there is no interest (either from DP or SwissPost or AnPost or even TNT) in taking over consumer delivery.  They're all poised to grab a big slice of business postage (the stuff I deal with), but consumer post in the UK is too badly run, they'd have to guarantee to deliver to small islands as well as the juicy London contracts, and both Tory & (spineless) Labour governments have made it clear that they feel they'll have to side with the consumers in any struggle over rights.  And none of these companie think the game's worth the candle.  He could have been giving me corporate bull, but it didn't feel like it.  You get occasional fly by night operations, but nobody has the investment available to replace Royal Mail.

I haven't been around to hear the ins and outs of the London stuff, my understanding is that managers in London have taken the rejection of a stike vote as a sign of capitulation and are now pushing thro even more drastic measures, the thing is, the conditions are crap, the pay low and the managers mindset is split between overt Thactherism and 1950s school teachers, put you hand up to go to the toilet etc.

Other info: no company wants to deliver to households theres no money in it, especially the rural areas, sink estates, urban sprall etc, this should be a public service, modernised? of course, but it will never pay its own way and the customers would never pay what it costs in real terms.
Royal Mail has been given 'streching'finanical targets but isn't allowed to charge more for its services. So its cutting staff numbers and increasing the work load on the remainder. The thing is, as previously this needs Govt intervention, it was Lord Sawyer last time, and an understanding that, like the maintanence of the railways, delivering all the National's mail can't be done with a profit mind set.

For years money that was raised by Royal Mail, this was hundred of millions each year, when it had a monoploy was taken by all govts to pay for tax cuts and other pet policies and never invested back in the infastructure, no business could operate like that private or nationalised, eventually something had to give.
No doubt the Telegraph readers and the people who grow up with Thatcher have no idea of what a Public Service ethos is, but that is what is needed here, before the Postal service ends up like the railways.
Over and out...

Quinta Brigada
 

There are several problems with the Royal Mail (having insider knowledge as well)- most of which are centred around a collossal waste of money and the Government's refusal to allow them to put up their prices (like any of us would really begrudge having to pay an extra two pence for a first class stamp).

The craziest thing has to be their 'sick' system.  As a postie, you're allowed to have up to four periods of sick leave per year (without a Doctor's note) before questions are asked.  A sick period starts when you fail to turn up for work and ends when you return.  Or to put it another way- if you're off for a day, you might as well be off for a week (after which you'll need a doctor's note), because if you feel ill again after returning and take the next day off- that's two sick periods that you've had.

Now then, I'm not suggesting *for one minute* that the humble postie might abuse this system- but I do know several posties that plan their holidays throughout the year based on the extra four weeks that they can go sick.  It's a bit of a silly system and must cost the Royal Mail a fortune.

I also know another woman who works in upper management who freely admits that she's paid a fortune to sit around all day looking for stuff to do.  There are way more managers than are actually needed (which I suspect is true of the trains and NHS as well).

I would have answered this post earlier, but I was having breakfast with my postie (on company time) because he also happens to be my best mate.  To be fair, it's pissing it down today and he'd earned it- but even he admits that he's doing a part time job for full time wages.  He hates it, but doesn't want to give up the spare time that goes with it...

He also admits that the job has got harder recently and most posties are having to do more- but before that, he used to moan that he had to be up a 4.30 (an hour before me), but was finished by 9.00- how he longs for those days again!  He now has short and long days- shorts finish at 8.30 and longs at 1.30, but he still does less hours than anyone else I know.

I will also have to grudgingly admit that his round (in his own words) is a "piece of piss" and it does seem a bit unfair that he's paid the same as some bloke delivering to a tower block.

They also have to work Saturdays and can't get time off over Christmas and New Year as the managers book that time off- which sucks!

Matt

like any of us would really begrudge having to pay an extra two pence for a first class stamp

Yeah, but it's not the domestic users who matter in that case, it's the business users.

E.g. one of my clients, Halifax, sends out approximately 4.5 million letters a month.  So 2p on postage, even with bulk discounts, would increase their monthly marketing costs by at least ?50K, or ?600K p.a.  With the government in thrall to big business, as all governments are, Tony "history will judge me" Blair gets scared by the very idea of fighting a group made up of MBNA, Capital One, Loans Company UK, Lloyds TSB, American Express, Barclays, Halifax, Saga Services, Morgan Stanley and DFS (the top ten mailers last month), plus just about all other banks, charities, mega retailers, etc etc.

Totallt agree with you on the mismanagement side, though.

one of my bessie mates is also a postie, there does seem to be a huge farce element in the organisation structures, Its only cos the majority of our local posties work more hours than theyre supposed to & don't put in overtime , have incredible local knowledge & are flexible with the rules, that anything works. One jobsworth recently came along & started demanding his rights & sticking to the rules & everything went tits up & the letters didnt get thru.

Luckily my pal kicks arse, & when they come around inspecting her van to see if shes filled in three forms to explain why the first aid box is one elastplast short, or *this is true* they wanted to count how many paperclips she had... she told them to Vuck right off, she had post to deliver ( and old ladies pensions, and shopping, and news of annabelles cow, and medicine to Jimmy, and help catch jockies sheep, & pull people out of ditches ... rural posties = lifeline )

Even if they stuck an extra 2 pence on each stamp, would cheap bulk mail actually be profitable? I thought all the real money was in parcel delivery.

my fathers a postman.
i know it from both sides.

if they started charging more for the MAILSORT stamped rubbish , I,E the stuff you throw in the bin, you could make the whole business more likely to make a larger profit.

note i say LARGER, you see its badly run,very very badly.
no two ways about it. but the real problem lies in the way no investment was made in the system.
take INSIGNIA the short lived renaming excercise they embarked on only to abandon it two years later.
have you any idea how much that cost?

but do you know its the best postal system in the world?
no where else in the entire world has such a successful system at the price you pay in the UK.
mail in your letter box by 10am six days a week.for 0.14 pence
from john o groats to lands end in 24 hours?

ask how much. DHL,or the like charge for a single letter to do that. post cards? dont make them laugh. i think its 2.80 sterling minimum charge and make sure its in before 10 am please.

DD it's not 14p any more...1st class 28p, 2nd class 20p.

Of course if we could all live electronically then only parcels and important legal documents would come by hand.....  But I suppose not everyone has email.

Personally I feel sorry for the postie and think they do a rather good job.  In the USA (I own a house there) letters take forever to arrive, I think that probably (as with most things run by the goverment) poor investment and waste of resources are probably to blame.

Yer SLips

British Gas is going this way. Which could be the beginning of the end for paper bills...

O2 email me my mobile bills too.

Actually, I do most of my banking online now...but the buggers still haven't made it possible to change your home address on thier website.  So I finally get around to posting the 'changed address' slip to them (11 months after moving in) on the same day that the strikes start.

Bovvocks.

i do all my bills on the net.
singapore is a wired society in the very essense of modern things.

i dont even have a cheque book. you can opt to have your bills on the internet for every government lnked service for which you get a $25 yearly rebate on your combined statement.

i pay every thing by the net. i have not been to the bank in YEARS. no joke. we all carry nets cards or direct debit credit cards with no minimum spend level on them.
even car parks are done by sensor detection from your card as are if you wish petrol pumps.

no cash no problem. yes the paper bill is very rare in singapore i would say the same for you chaps in future.
which is in turn less business for the postoffice.

In which case DD, they should make the most of the mail they have left & deliver it before there is no more post to post!!

I don't understand how the regulators can allow our mail service to get into such a state. Royal Mail makes a huge loss, and can't afford to give its employees raises, so allow them to scrap second class and put up a first class letter to 30p or even 35p. That price for next-day delivery to anywhere in the UK is still great value and cheaper the postal service of many other Western countries.

Well my newsagent didn't have my latest prog yesterday.I work in a bank's mailroom in Edinburgh(where I live)and this week due to lack of mail I'm almost 6 hours short of my 35 hours, I have a wife and young daughter to support so I'd rather have the money/hours than time off. Personally I couldn't care if they did sack 'em all, give their jobs to people who actually appreciate having a permanent 'secure'? job. I've been working under temporary contracts for years and I'd love to have a permanent job, these people don't know how lucky they are. By the way these 'wildcat' strikes are nothing to do with me!
Seriously tho' given the choice I'd be on the side of the workers, but I don't see why some dispute in London should affect Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Link: Nick Very's online folio

Or why it should disrupt London, even.

Thier disputes have *nothing* to do with me, yet I have to suffer regardless.
We've had enough bloody strikes in the last year, if it's not the tube, it's the fire dept, we've had rubbish collection strikes and now the post!
I'd like to see how long I'd last if my department were to go on strike, not bloody long I can tell you, and that wouldn't even harm anybody for a day or two, or possibly a week - be like taking a holiday really, the office *can* cope with out us for a few days.
It's hugely unfair that only certain jobs can strike if they're unhappy, and those that do I have no sympathy for - there are other ways to go about standing up for your rights, and at the end of the day if you don't like your job you can look for another one.

Just do the bloody job.

No cheques or invoices in the post at work today. Not looking good for the Christmas bonus scheme or my order from bleedin Amazon!

C - you work in accounts too? Snap!

No, I er, I.. I... I'm a feckin receptionist alright? I know I'm a twenty year old bloke but I'm a receptionist and have been for two years! Two years on minimum wage! Ah well, at least I get to bum around here all day ;)

common guys, workers got the right to strike! okay so its a pain, but thats the point. yes its a bummer that all of us can't do that, more power to the rest of us having some sort of rights or contract or wage.

junk mail? dudley? what do you do ? are you responsible for junk mail? tax them bastishes, i used to gleeefully shredd junk mail & use it for Raku firing, but there was so much of it i went thru 4 shredders & still hadnt a hope in hell of recycling all that shiV. Grrr, poor posties having to lug all that pointless shiV.

likewise SPAM is one reason why i don't do as much business, banking, whatever on-line, the spam clutter is too much, i often accidently delete proper mails which get lost in the viagra& valium tsunami. ARGGGHHHH !

( I'm a few K short of the minimum wage btw , grud bless the UK. )

junk mail? dudley? what do you do ?

I sell people's names and addresses so that other people can send junk mail to them, or junk telephone sales calls.

I'm proud of having done this disgusting job (well, this disgusting job and advertising sales) long enough to have helped my wife through her PhD.  My time in this job is drawing to a close.

All the email spam you're talking about is almost certainly nothig to do with anybody in the UK, though - the code of rules is so tight everyone's giving up on email marketing right now.  40% of all email traffic is down to just 150 firms, mostly located in Florida, that do nothing but trawl the web all day for your email addresses.

Dudley - You're a Tower Hamlets man, what do you think about all of the stories of post bags being 'lost', or left in the middle of the street because the postie got fed up and went home? If you're wondering, I heard of this through some of the local papers (EastendLife, etc)

Also, God help us with private delivery companies! A parcel from Argos was delivered today, not by parcelforce, but by another bunch who pushed a note through the door with the section "Your parcel may be found" scrawled over with "Under hedge, near wall."
No local depot, not left with the neighbour, but it was stuffed under the bushes next to my front gate, and with all thwe local brats running around on half term...

Well, private delivery is a pilke of crap wherever you are in the country - you should be glad you weren't there when we were trying to get John Lewis to deliver our wedding list gifts.  

Postie stories.  I like our postman.  He has a fag hanging permanently out of the side of his mouth, he never delivers before half one, and I've twice had to chase him down because I was at home when a "We did not find you at home to deliver this parcel" notice was pushed through my door.  I would hate him, but he so blatantly doesn't care it's actually quite admirable.

EastEndLife is pretty good for a freesheet, I'd guess they might even be telling the truth  :0

I believe the problem with the post is directly because of the cancellation of Farscape. The G.P.O. loved Farscape and are still bitter about it's premature ending.

To rub salt in the wounds all us Doctor Who fans are having a whale of a time what with new series, the animated version and the Big Finish celebratory C.D. The G.P.O. can't halt the first two but are doing their best to stop us getting the new Paul McGann C.D. through the mail. So when you think about it, the writer of that C.D. is partially to blame. Alan Barnes, you should be ashamed...

There was an excellent story in a local Edinburgh paper earlier this year.. a postie had been off sick for a short time and someone from royal mail visited him, thousands of letters were found in his home,all over the place,stuffed in drawers etc..
But the thing is this guy had so much mail to deliver basically he couldn't deliver it all, so he held on to it and fully intended to deliver it at a later date. This chap was actually 100% honest as none of the mail had been opened or tampered with, he didn't hold on to it for any immoral/illegal reasons. There was some quote from his mum saying 'he's a good lad really'.
I'm not sure what happened to him, but I know the courts realised he wasn't stealing as such. I kinda felt sorry for him. But it conjurs up images of a fat postie in his armchair surrounded by countless envelopes and maybe a few pizza boxes, who basically couldn't be arsed delivering.

Link: R McMillan's design folio

What Bou said.

I wonder how many other subbing boarders intend to buy their prog from the newsagents in the meantime, thus boosting the circulation of the Galaxy's Greatest?

(BTW "subbing boarders" is not made-up swearing).

I was about to keeel you there dudley until you denied blame for spam, so who are these 150 floridians, can i get slippo on contract to keeel them next time hes out there?

"A parcel from Argos was delivered today, not by parcelforce, but by another bunch who pushed a note through the door with the section "Your parcel may be found" scrawled over with "Under hedge, near wall."  ..."

Yersss ... I had something even better: "We have left your parcel ..." followed by "in the bin".

Yes. That's right. In the wheelie-bin. With the kitchen waste and bags of used cat litter.

Fortunately, a quick peek in the aforementioned bin was enough to read the address label and learn that the parcel as actually for a previous occupant.

Even more fortunately, this didn't happen before 10.00am on a Wednesday, which is bin day.

Morons.

Cheers

Jim

Stupid, stupid, Post creatures....


Your damn strike has effected our postal system- so no prog today.

How many posties are on strike???
How many unemployed are there in UK at the mo?

Sack 'em all, and give their jobs to the (previously) unemployed!

heres a strange fact UKdane

the post office have 1000s of job vacancies.
they have always had a problem with it. based on the long hours and poor pay for most vacancies. very high turnover rate of staff.

strange isnt it.they could sack em all.but it would likely be even worse then it is now.

Unemployment is dealt with slightly differently in DK- It's a ctually a damn good system, and one of the reasons why the unemployment rate in Scandinavia (as a whole) is so low.

Basically, If your unemployed, you can sign up for the dole.
BUT when doing this, you have to submit a CV.
At ANY point during the time you are signed up for the dole, the local employment agency can call you up and send you out to work- anywhere, anytime. And as long as you want to continue receiving benefit (which is much higher than in UK) you have to turn up. If you don't, then you risk being kicked off the dole.
It's slightly more complicated than that, ie You have to have been a member of a union for 1 year before losing your job. The chance of you being sent out within the first 12 months is reduced.
BUT it does mean that unemployment levels are kept low, as at any time they could ring and ask you to clean the streets, remove snow, work as an odd-job man for a high ranking accountant, fill in for sick teachers, the job could be anything.


Yer 'Dane - collecting benefit again!

They do have a right to strike Bou, though these 'sympathy' strikes aren't such a good idea.

The Royal Mail is basically an ailing company, the last thing it needs is largescale strikes where companies switch to another mail provider and don't come back.

Basically this is a dangerous game to play (give us some more money, or we'll make you pay anyway), because if they carry on, there won't be a Royal Mail (personally I think it'll be gone in 10 years) and they'll end up working for an American owned corporation who will pay them less to work harder in more unpleasant conditions.  

Incidentally private companies will deliver personal mail, they'll just charge more for it.  At todays rates you'd probably pay ?2-3 to deliver to a village and up to ?8 to take it to some godforsaken place.  Finally you'll end up paying a mail subscription service monthly for the pleasure when the private companies are in control.

When it's gone, it's gone, and it won't ever come back.  So this seems a bit of a gamble to me.  The basic problem is that the Royal Mail needs to make money and the posties aren't getting enough.  It would be much better if the unions worked on how that might be possible in order to pay the workers some of it back in return.  This rash of strikes is just self defeating.

Strikes over now everyone, they managed to thrash out a deal at around four this morning. Hopefully, it shouldn't take too long for the backlog of post to filter through so everyone gets their progs this week rather than two months down the line!

phew..... spoke to my postie mate last night , she was going ballistic & writing stinky letters to postie newspaper, she reconned it could be the final straw for getting rid of rural posties & bringing in stupid couriers ( who generally 'sorry we don't deliver to the west coast' etc etc ). Her postie collegue is retiring, & his job is advertised as temporary postie only, thin edge of wedge etc.

so now its over theres no excuse for not getting business done? damn.

As the Beeb points out, since the union didn't authorise the strike it can't actually order people back to work.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3236031.stm

When I was in DK I had a very nice picnic sat by a little pond and wooded area that was apparently created and maintained by the unemployed in this way, whilst my Danish mate attempted to persuade me of the general betterness of the DK way of doing absolutely anything. He was pretty convincing on the subject, and the fact that the people seemed so healthy and happy and  everything was so clean and well maintained could sway me (its very convincing if you live in, say, Camden), but its worth noting that he doesn?t live there anymore :-)

And yet one striker is reported as saying that he will return to work if his union tells him to- funny that!

The reason that a compulsory work programme works in Denmark but wouldn't work in Britain is one of mindset.  Here in Britain we value people only as economic units.  All this talk of 'let the markets decide people's wages' actually means, 'pay people as little as they can bare'.  Whenever new working rights are introduced they have to be justified by their value to business, i.e. happy workers = productive workers, rather than their value to people.  I long to hear a public debate where one side does not fall into this terribly mechanistic trap, for example, 'let's give people better health and safety at work because it is the right thing to do.  It'll cost business money, but that's the cost of a good society.'  Everything from pension to sick-pay rights to anti-racism laws are justified on the basis that they are good for business.  They should be justified on the basis that they are simply good.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that with this level of public debate can you really see the compusorary working unemployed being treated with dignity?  Or rather as cheap labour?  Let's take the example of YTS.  Or many New Deal cases.  Or the use of 'temporary' labour.  This cheap labour will then be used to undermine the working rights of the most vulnerable workers.  Which, of course, is great for business.  

Theres definatley a much greater sence of obligation to the community in DK. Anyone sitting around doing nothing would be very much frounded upon.

I think this kind of goes back to a discussion we had ages ago about the fact that benefits should be higher.

I'd have no objection to raising benefits (and I mean *really* raising them- not just chucking somebody an extra tenner a fortnight) if we had a system like they do in DK.  Although that said, finding a decent job can be a full time job in itself and you'd run the risk of 'unemployment' being your 'job' because you didn't have time for doing anything else...

2 Things.

1) One of the reasons why this system works better in DK than it would in UK is definately to do with the culture. Speciafically the fact that no one job, or person in a job is any better than another. Ok, so a higher paypackage is represented by more responsibility, or better qualifications. BUT (and I'll take working for Lego as an example here) The man on what would be considered the bottom rung in UK is not seen as anything other than a work colleague by anyone on a rung higher. Likewise, a person in a senior managerial position is regarded equally by the person who cleans the toilets (Ok, this is a bit of a generalisation, but the overall mindset is there).
I had a long conversatin at my interview for Lego with the person who was to employ me, and we were in total agreement, that there are clear differences between the two cultures.
There are very few "titles" or "titled postions" here, and most that do exist are there either because the company isn't Danish by origin, or because the posistion necessitates that their is a title.

2) Shortly after posting the above message, someone rang me up and offered me a job- not sure if I'll take it yet, as the hours are diabolical (I'll hardly get to see my family, and its only a parttime job), AND I might get paid more on the dole than I do if I were to take this job- a tricky position!

As the Beeb points out, since the union didn't authorise the strike it can't actually order people back to work.

Way I see it - as it wasn't an official strike, the Royal Mail should put all the "strikers" on disciplinaries & dock thier wages for the hours they were "striking".  They were just taking the pizz really, blagging time off work.

Many other European countries also have a level of democracy in their workplace that puts Britain to shame.  Work councils, unions on the board etc.

To think we call ourselves a democracy when the environment where we spend the vast majority of our waking lives remains outside the remit of democracy, either directly through participation, or though any substantial governmental involvement.  The mantra of much of the public press appears to be, 'keep government out of business - leave it to the market'.

the Royal Mail should put all the "strikers" on disciplinaries & dock thier wages for the hours they were "striking"

Oh, don't worry, they're planning exactly that sort of thing.  That's why we call them "evil incompentent capitalist pig scum".


GC - nice icon BTW - we aren't a democracy.  Elective dictatorship, with a sovereign who still has limited but real powers, isn't the half of it.  How about the fact that no party can win office without a fighting fund of about ?12M, thus ensuring that every politician has to be in the pockets of big business?  Or the House of Lords, not even vaguely improved by getting rid of the hereditary element?  Or the enormous and disproportionate power of the (privately-owned) press, egged on by the lack of privacy legislation and relatively mild forms of censure for out and out lying?

We need a written constitution, state funding of political parties, replacement of the House of Lords with an elected body, and newspaper controls simlar to those on television channels, at the very least, before we can call ourselves a democracy.

well, I got my prog on time, nyeeerrr!