The Governance Partnership > A.O.B.
A.O.B.
Dead Letters
Published: 27 December 2011
The Royal Mail may soon be allowed to charge as much as it likes for a first – class stamp. It could rise to £1 quite swiftly from the present 46p.
Hold it there please: 46p is equivalent to a little over 9 shillings in pre-decimalisation old money (1 shilling = 5p) and is already one heck of a price to pay post a letter.
No wonder perhaps that technology, in the shape of SMS messaging, e-mail, the internet, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a growing plethora of social networking tools, have transformed the way in which we communicate with each other.
And what a transformation it is. According to Duncan Campbell-Smith, author of Masters of the Post, The Authorised History of the Royal Mail (Allen Lane), in the late 19th century, every large city in Britain received four postal deliveries a day. In London, there were five deliveries a day. These days most customers are over the moon if they receive just one delivery a day.
Royal Mail is being squeezed by a vicious pincer movement that could imperil its planned ultimate privatisation. One pincer takes the form of its so-called ‘universal service obligation’ – a requirement that its army of postmen must collect and deliver letters six days a week anywhere in Britain for the same price; the other is the unstoppable march of technology.
Such, alas, is the price of progress.
Peter Hill is a Partner of The Governance Partnership