First Post, Last Post
Posted by P S
20/10/2009
So the world turns and the crisis stirs a little - a little deeper? a little less deep?
Last Thursday, our Times Literary Supplement arrived on the right day, for the first time in a while. Ha!
I watched Jon Snow suggesting to Lord Mandelson that ACAS be involved in the postal dispute. But what would they bring to the table? His Lordship asked, as if he really wanted to know. I’d assumed that the clue was in the name - Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service - but apparently not.
Elsewhere, though remembering to ask a few questions, other interviewers appeared, implicitly or explicitly, to accept the view promulgated by the government and sections of the press, that it really came down to pigheaded postmen and postwomen who would rather spoil pensioners’ Christmases than modernise, accept swingeing cuts, upheaval in their working practices and the rest.
There seemed little obvious discussion of the extent to which the mail service has already been part-privatised, destabilised and generally mucked around with, nor the curious habits of the management. Though such discussion can be found:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/maya01_.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/18/victoria-coren-royal-mail
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/18/royalmail-strike-union-disaster
Now, as the good ship Strike Breaker steams up to the jetty, laden with a suspiciously large number of temporary workers, the Royal Mail, presumably with encouragement from unspecified quarters, seems to be gearing up for a full-scale battle with its employees.
And even now, when so many institutions and public services have been allowed to founder, either through benign neglect or malign assault, I find it astonishing that more effort is not being made to retrieve the situation, and that people who could influence developments for the better are sitting on their hands – if that’s what they’re sitting on.
I used to have a list of things - things of a British-culture-defining type - that needed to be supported, valued properly and generally not buggered about with. They haven’t done too well of late. The list included:
The National Health Service – always in danger, always attracting the hostile attentions of lunatics
The Royal Mail – ditto
Test Cricket on terrestrial television – already gone, inexcusably (even if you don't follow cricket)
The BBC – attracts even more hostile lunatics than the National Health Service
The Public Library System – disgracefully undervalued and underfunded
To offset such a black list, I have enrolled for a series of Optimism Classes but remain quietly pessimistic about the good they'll do.