The bolshi reds ...

20 August

Jan has just phoned me from Skegness to say they had arrived safely. Kile has been to the sea side many times but his step brother Billy hasn’t been there at all, and that is why they have gone. I shall be taking advantage of the break and will get on with some writing as soon as I’ve posted this.

The Post Office has some serious problems folks. There’s an ingrained arrogance within it from top to bottom, although there are the odd few staff who prove that to be wrong; but as the old saying goes, the acceptation proved the rule. For years I have said that as a group Royal Mail drivers are the very worst drivers in the UK. They park where they want, race around getting in everyone’s way expecting everyone else to get out of their way. I regularly see them driving through no entry signs and ignoring all the normal parking rules and regs.

The arrogance is usually seen at sorting offices. I once made a complaint to the one in Bed’th over mail going missing and being late. The manager just shrugged his shoulders and told me in effect to, ‘get over it, I’m not interested’. My complaint was then followed on to a complaints department in Bristol and even that person got nowhere with the same manager. He tried ten letters by sending them in their own envelops and plain brown ones. When we left Bed’th we were still waiting for three of them to arrive, and they were posted four years earlier.

We were out one day and when we got back we had a card through the door to say we missed a parcel. We had to go over to Coventry to collect it the following day. When we got there, there was a row going on between the staff member the other side of the counter and one a man who had gone to collect a parcel. In the end the staff member walked off and refused to deal with anyone else until the man had left; he refused. So someone came to the counter and closed it! By then there was queue building up and when they closed it there was an uproar. They eventually opened up again but the man who had argued was still refused his parcel. As I got my parcel I said, ‘You do realise that withholding this man’s mail is a criminal offence don’t you?’ I left before I heard any response. Whatever happened to customer service I wonder?

Then this morning I sat and watched this week’s Panorama about problems with the post office computer system, Horizon. There are bugs with in that keeps losing money with the result that postmasters are being charged with theft and false accounting. Documents shown on the programme show that the Post Office know about the bugs and yet they still will not accept that the losses are down to Horizon and not their staff. Some have jailed because of it, many after the defence had asked for disclosure of documents which had been ignored or just refused. Talk about miscarriages of justice! Someone at the top know about this and is running hard to cover their arses. It needs a thorough investigation, and quickly!

Take it all into account and there is a clear case for the arrogance within the all the departments of the Post Office. We as tax payers still own a good deal of it and we should demand a full and public investigation into what is going on there. Maybe my UK readers would like to get in touch with their own Muppet Person to push for an investigation. I will as soon as I get this in the post.

Today’s photo … 

Well. It had to be didn’t it? What you don’t see here is the pedestrian crossing markers just a meter or two off to the right. How is someone wanting to use the crossing, going to see if anything is coming with that thing parked as it is!

Today’s funny …

 Never, under any circumstances, combine a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.