Sir – It's now a second day without a mail delivery. As an ex postman one wonders what's happening. A little bit of snow and it all goes to pot. Albeit, perhaps we have had a fair quota of snow but back in the old days, indeed not too far back though, the post would go out whatever the conditions.
Our old inspector would tell us to take care and go out and deliver what we could and don't be too late back. The majority of us all cared in those days; some of us walked around Fernhurst, Henley, Grayswood and Stoatley, we didn't mind, we took a pride in our job and we were all local boys, we all lived within a three-mile radius of the delivery office.
One of the worst things Royal Mail did was to drop this restriction. How can you expect to have all your delivery staff in when they are scattered about, Havant, Petersfield, Bordon, Godalming, Petworth, etc and a management coming from Portsmouth and Farnham?
Why didn't the town deliveries go out? They could have doubled up and gone out on foot.
Each postman is issued with snow chains to go on their footwear so that shouldn't have presented a problem for them. I do know that certain individuals were prepared to go out but were stopped by management. Surely this cannot be acceptable practice.
Why wasn't an afternoon collection made, again, at least the town boxes could have been cleared and kept in the delivery office until the lorry arrived the following morning?
My guess is that health and safety at work will be the response.
Wouldn't it have made sense for RM to have advised the local radio station of what was happening and why?
Name and address supplied, Haslemere