In the meantime, slightly tongue in cheek ......
Royal Mail in its wisdom decided a couple of years ago that to save money some of its provincial sorting offices would be closed down over a period of a couple of years so anybody who isn't at home to take delivery of parcels/letters which are too big to go through the letterbox, or require a signature on receipt, must now travel much further afield to collect the parcel.
In our case, when the local sorting office is closed (scheduled for Jan 2013 I believe) we will have to travel into busy Canterbury City - 30 minutes away if you are a car driver - far longer if you need to use public transport
Must admit I hadn't really focussed too much on the protests but as the closure date gets closer I've been noticing more and more leaflets/notices around town:
Well I thought long and hard about how I/we could help the cause. Our house sits at the end of a long gravel private drive and whenever I/we walk into town I can't help but notice and pick up masses of rubber bands that are dropped by the postmen/women when they deliver letters. Here's a photo of the latest collection picked up from our drive/the local footpath:
The bands are dangerous to wildlife and I figure they probably cost Royal Mail quite a lot of money to replace ... so I've now started picking up all the bands I find and very helpfully posting them in the local mailbox so they can be re-used by our posties .... ingenious don't you think!!
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| Local Mailbox |
Win Win situation all round - and if everyone did this perhaps it would save Royal Mail so much money they could afford to maintain our much needed local centres ....
This is a good idea Sue, I hate to think the posties are just dropping these rubber bands.
ReplyDeleteHowever, less and less is going through the hands of post offices any more, I very rarely send or receive mail other than Christmas Cards or the odd birthday card. Matt would instantly point out to me that not everyone has a computer, true, but...
there use to be 2 post offices in town, but they closed the "good"one and the one left is less than helpful. try to avoid the place as much as possible.
ReplyDeletethe new scheme that royal mail has where if you are not home to get a package, they will give it to your neighbour for you, is stupid. what if you have neighbours like us? only one of the houses i would trust with our mail, the other close ones would probably burn it and deny they had it. not everyone gets along with their neighbours (old couple, that have done nothing but try to get us kicked out since we moved in, and a middle aged couple that have nothing better to do with their time then complain to the council about us, and the council has had enough of that and told them pretty much to stop since its all gossip and lies),and a lot of people do not know that royal mail is going to do this. you can opt out so they dont deliver your mail to your neighbours which is good but they are not exactly letting people know they can do this, which we did so our mail doesnt get burned :p
Many of our local post offices are closing also and the ones that aren't have had their hours reduced considerably.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad fact of life that people are no longer using the mail much any more.
Bless you for picking up the rubber bands though - at least you'll save some wildlife if not the postal service some money!
Thanks Jan
ReplyDeletealthough picking up dropped bands and posting them probably doesn't go down too well with the posties LOL - I'm making a bit of a protest really :-)
Haha Sue - ingenious idea to post those rubber bands back to those who dropped them! Now any ideas to stop the recycling guys leaving half the recycling on the end of my drive - and leaving all the recycling boxes scattered over the entrance to my drive so I can't get in! Oh and the bin men who leave half the rubbish over the roads - although the birds seem to like having a good rummage in what's left behind lol! Rant over! It is a shame these post offices are closing especially the really friendly village ones which have been part of the community and give the best service!
ReplyDeleteHaha Sue - ingenious idea to post those rubber bands back to those who dropped them! Now any ideas to stop the recycling guys leaving half the recycling on the end of my drive - and leaving all the recycling boxes scattered over the entrance to my drive so I can't get in! Oh and the bin men who leave half the rubbish over the roads - although the birds seem to like having a good rummage in what's left behind lol! Rant over! It is a shame these post offices are closing especially the really friendly village ones which have been part of the community and give the best service!
ReplyDeleteBinmen are a law unto themselves aren't they Sharon. They do the same to us - leave the wheelie bins in the middle of the drive so we have to leave the car in the road whilst we move bins to enable us to access our drive. Strange mentality!
ReplyDeleteI did think about photographing the bins and emailing the council but ... perhaps it doesn't do to alienate the binmen - never sure how they might take their revenge :-)