No need for the Germans to bomb the Royal Mail into submission …

Clive Betts writes from home in retirement.

I WONDER HOW much post is locked up inside Welsh postal sorting offices, as Christmas Day nears.

We all know how bad the weather has been in the last week or so, and the difficulties this has caused to public services.

But the world has not quite stopped. Services have often got through, and I live on the hilly outskirts of Caerffili down a street cursed with a nasty double bend on a very steep slope.

But the milkman arrived, albeit extremely late. Dairy Crest’s workmen missed only one of their every-other-day deliveries. Even though it meant, on one occasion, starting from their Cardiff depot at 2 am and finishing at 10 pm !!!!

Only one complete day was missed, as far as I know, by Stagecoach buses from the Bedwas depot. When the following day I walked into town, I was agreeably surprised as I approached the centre to see a vehicle on one of my two routes.

All right, when I waited at the stop to get home, it was obvious not many vehicles had got out, and I eventually got home on a different route which involved walking up a hill that few vehicles could ascend, and no buses that day.

Approaching my street through the back way, I had a chat with two neighbours who were working with shovels to clear the road to enable their vehicles to move. Later I myself, used a pick axe on the ice to cut vehicle tracks.

The following morning the steep hill I had struggled up – carrying far too many groceries -was in bus use. By now the council had clearly ploughed the main residential routes, and on those more-important estate roads grit was to be seen lying freshly dropped every day.

With the buses running rigidly to time, and the dustmen hard at work – avoiding only some of the steepest residential streets – it was time to wonder what was happening to the post.

None had arrived for more than a week – with the exception of the day two postmen appeared carrying something. But nothing for me. The men went to the extremities of the street carrying little packages of letters held by red rubber bands.

But the vast majority of homes were missed.

A special delivery, apparently, for those awaiting packages of some importance.

Ah well. The post has always prided itself on clearing the office of mail. At least, they are getting on with the job.

Next day, no posties at all.

But it will surely all happen today. After all, we hardly expect a Christmas Day delivery in Caerffili. No Muslim or Hindu postmen in the town, that’s why.

Cardiff could be a bit different – that’s where there’s no difficulty in getting a taxi, for instance, on Christmas Day.

Quite early today a PO van did in fact appear, carrying TWO postmen. The van parked at the top of the street, well clear of our notorious double bend on a hill.

The men proceeded to walk their round – which is officially called a Walk. To save the postman a climb to our first-floor front door, we collected the post from the van.

“A rather slim pile,” I said. “Perhaps there’s another delivery later to clear the office before it closes for both Saturday and Sunday; or perhaps there’s nothing more.”

Yet when we examined the post in detail, a lot was missing. There’s TWO issues of Golwg which are missing; that magazine usually arrives religiously every Friday.

Surely there must be some Christmas cards missing; we must have sent more than we have received. For instance, perhaps those old – very old – school pals have given up on me.

And where’s the Christmas card I posted to my wife well over a week ago ? As I usually forget anniversaries – you name it, and I’ve missed it time and again – I decided to be VERY GOOD for once by being very obvious about how good (this time, anyway) my memory is.

Fortunately, my wife believes me this time. Saved by Golwg, I suppose.

We must really ask what the Post Office had been up to. Not much, it is clear.

Who to blame ? The postmen ? Television carried a line last night about deliveries being late because the pavements were slippery.

Well, I don’t believe that that single line was the entire story given the BBC by the Post Office’s Cardiff press officer. No doubt the press officer did say that the pavements were icy, but she no doubt said a lot more.

Which the BBC decided to ignore, as in the few seconds that the reporter had available to give the official reason, this was the most “sensational” – or stupid – thing he could repeat.

Perhaps we will never know why the Post Office has failed so spectacularly. After all, when the snow has gone, we’ll have forgotten.

I don’t know much about sorting offices – except that they often make terrific Wetherspoon public houses. When I was a sixth-former doing the Christmas post, I was skilled at missing the train back to the office in order to garner additional overtime.

We were only tiny cogs in a massive wheel. But we knew it was a well-oiled wheel, and that the full-time posties would ensure it would keep running.

But clearly not this week.

Why ?

Union rules ? A union softly-softly protest about impending privatisation ? Egged on quietly-quietly by politicians from Liebour … and indeed by some in Plaid.

Or is the management trying to cut spending; avoiding the overtime necessary to ensure that the job is done properly when the weather turns vile ?

Perhaps the management (or the union ?) is trying to make a protest point about privatisation. About being sold to the Germans or the Dutch.

The Government is apparently considering varying options for privatisation. A Sid-style offering to the public is one possibility. Another could involve a chunk of shares going to the management and workers.

Well, on the example of this week I wouldn’t recommend any of the public buying shares. The management and/or workers aren’t worth it.

So, it looks life we’ll have to call the Germans in to sort out a British mess – and they won’t even have to bomb us to achieve something.

Perhaps then we’ll see the introduction of the natty liittle pull-along trolleys that the German posties use around their town centres.

When Deutsche Post took over the operations of the DDR service in the East, they made a tremendous job of it. Big provincial towns received brand new sorting offices, emblazoned with massive new flags.

Seeing that lot, one knew at once that the past had changed. British postal officials were exceptionally jealous about what had been achieved; they blamed the Whitehall Treasury for having sucked up years of past profits in order to keep taxes low for the public.

After last week it is clear that something major has to change within the British Royal Mail. What’s the point of having the Queen’s face on a stamp if you never see the letters on which the stamp has been stuck ?

Or the Welsh insignia for our four Welsh definitive stamps – not that you often see them anyway – despite the snow – as rarely, if ever, do Post Offices nowadays issue them.

The Germans are already taking over our railways – they have achieved total ownership of the Wrexham and Shropshire Railway Company, which runs into Marylebone station in London, where the local service, Chiltern Railways – one of the most adventuous operators in the UK – is a DB subsidiary.

Is the Post Office next ?