Back to the 70's

I make a bloody awful socialist. I voted Tony in, and helped keep him in. And got a Tory.

Now we're faced with the postal workers' strike. I have some sympathy with the workforce, in that they see £1.2 billion coming in from the government, and ask why they can't share in some of that. But the fact is the Post Office is dying. Probably not as badly as the management had to make out to get their lifeline, but still they are seeing their most profitable markets (Business post and bulk mail) being creamed off by the private sector, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab on Universal Post.

Personally, I think there are lots of things that are better run by the public sector than the private sector. The railway fiasco is one example. But something as simple as catering is another. Go to the Hillier Gardens near Winchester, or the canteen at Richmond Town Hall. The catering at both is run by the Council, and is reasonably priced, and of excellent quality.

Ask the private sector to serve decent food? They pulled out of the catering contract at my children's school, leaving us with the possibility of sandwiches for the first term of next year.

Under current EU rules, the Post Office had to be opened up to competition, as did the other European Post Offices. And that is going to be a painful process, because there will have to be changes.

Some of those changes will be stupid (Turning half of a load of WHSmiths into Post Offices. Strange decision). But many will be necessary, with new technology and new working practices. It's going to be tough, and the government can't (legally) keep pumping money in.

I agree that the postal workers probably deserve more. But striking is not the way to get it. A whole generation has grown up without significant union and strike activity. Sadly, I'm just old enough to remember the Winter of Discontent. And I lament that passing of whole industries that could otherwise have been saved, like the world-beating motor industry.

E-mail as replaced letters as a primary method of communication. I used to have bundles of letters I had sent to pen friends (what a quaint notion), and if we were lucky, we'd manage a letter a week. Today, it's instant (and not as much fun, I'd say, old git that I am)

All this round of strikes is doing is showing an old-world anachronistic company. Sorry guys, but all these strikes will do is lose more people their jobs more quickly, and move those people who do shuffle things like paper around to look at how they can web-enable the process to speed it up, and not be held to ransom...