Stream of Consciousness

[Gareth]

My post really is messed up, for example I had 7 letters delivered all in one post on Friday and they'd all been sent at various times, some over a week prior, yet they all appeared at the same time. Including the rest of the household's post, we had around 16+ letters o_o

I can assure you everything has been leaving our office on the day it arrives. Well in the most part, most days around 100-200 letters that arrive late, or get mis-sorted for people who have already left for delivery, in the office don't go out on the first day they arrive. But the get dealt with the following morning. The biggest problem now is that other companies are allowed to use the mail network. In the past there was 1st and 2nd class mail, and for large postings companies could use mail sort (by large imagine severn trent water rates, of several million letters at once.) Other than that RM had a monopoly, meaning that they were the only company that could delivered an addressed item in the country, for under £1.
When Labour got into power that monopoly was removed, meaning that other couriers could then compete in the letters market. The idea being that they could increase competiton and therefore increase quality and service, as companies had to fight for their income streams. However as Royal Mail are the only organisation with a delivery network in the country, we have been ordered to deliver any post these other companies want us too, for whatever price they tell us too. So whilst a letter may cost us 10p to process and deliver, a company like TNT can go to Barclays, tell them they will get it delivered for 8p each, pick up the mail, then tell us that they only want to pay 5p per letter, meaning we are legally obliged to deliver that item at a loss. The proviso was that these companies were supposed to be creating their own delivery networks, or lose their mail carrying licence, but so far dispite that time passing, the regulator has done nothing.
What you may find is that alot of the mail now has a S in the corner. That means it's downstream access, which is another companies mail that we are delivering. We are obliged to treat it as 1st class mail when we get it, but between the sender posting ot and the collector such as TNT, DHL, Business post etc, passing it on to Royal Mail, can take several days. Basically Labour fadged the post service, and we like to strike alot