Our Postie

Our postie doesn't look like one, if anyone can "look like" the job they do, that's to say ! What I really mean is that there is nothing in his appearance that says, 'I am a postman.'

He's young, has long brown hair which he ties back with a rubber band in a grunge-rock kind of way and wears jeans, a hoodie and trainers. The only way to identify his 'Royal Mailness' is the bright red bag full of letters to deliver.

I suppose I should be grateful that I recognise our postal worker because, from what I gather, many people have a different person turn up every day. He certainly may be regular but his timing isn't. He can arrive any old time.

Our block of flats is next to a traditional corner shop selling newspapers, tobacco and hot filled rolls. It is the place he delivers to prior to coming in our front door and, if his arrival coincides with lunchtime, he hands over the mail to the shop staff and buys a roll filled with sliced sausage while he's there.

He then comes out of the shop and stands in the street eating his lunch. Only then does he move on and deliver our letters. His dress and behaviour hardly deonte a public servant, but then he probably doesn't think of himself as one and his bosses have perhaps done nothing to inclucate in him any sense of that.

It is a picture of the terminal decline of the post as something of geniune importance. Rember when all our postal workers had to conform to the Postman Pat stereotype ? No more, and it is so because those who run the Royal Mail no longer see any need for it. Delivering our letters, less important now because of e-mail, is just another business not a public duty. It's all about profit.

Thankfully, some who still work in the postal service see it as just that, a public service. That is the reason why they are going on strike this week, to make sure those standards are not lost completely. They believe the Royal Mail is worth saving, that it can be both modernised and retain its essential spirit. We can still move with the times and yet preserve the seriousness of duty conveyed in John Grierson's great film, Night Mail.

But politicians can only see money flowing into the Exchequer's coffers by hiving part of it off to the private sector, and can only but blindly follow their great dictum that greater choice in mail deliverly services will benefit the public. You get the feeling they believe allowing orange-jacketed TNT posties to compete with the Royal Mail is a good thing. The bosses want more profits and want staff to jump through more hoops in order to achieve it, even though that profit is not being ploughed back into making the service anything of the sort.

There is only one thing for it; if you think the post is too important to put profit first then don't complain when there are no deliveries on Thursday and Friday. Support our striking posties.