Use the postal service or we will lose it

With the privatisation of Royal Mail, its success as a world class universally available national postal delivery network that offers an effective and alternative means of public and social communication will depend largely on the retention of local and regional sorting offices and delivery services.

Royal Mail post box. Picture by Gabriel Szabo/Guzelian

So the continued effectiveness of this vital and alternative communication system, now in the hands of potentially unrestricted private or corporate control, depends on its widespread use by ordinary people.

To lose local and regional provision of a vital social national network when we are so dependent on electronic communications and the internet, puts our communication security at great risk in the same way that relying on transportation of food from source to consumer without local or regional capacity also greatly endangers our national food security.

We can all take the lead by buying a few extra stamps, sending a few more greeting cards or a few more letters, and encourage others to do the same. The WI encourages us to each spend a few more pounds each week in our local high street and collectively this is how ordinary people can really make a massive difference in shaping the society we want.

Kathleen Calvert,

Paythorne