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For the Sake of our Mail

11th August, 2005

Our Mail is of supreme importance, because it is one method by which we communicate. Communication is the most important of all human activities.

It would be no exaggeration to say, that communication is life. You know a guy is dead, when he goes silent. When you cannot get him to breathe a word.

Therefore if we wish to partake in the game called Life, we must be able to communicate. It is a vital function, whose value is beyond price.

Those who first devised the Penny Post, knew of the supreme importance of mail, as a means of communication and did not count the cost. They merely decided that it was important to have letters delivered everywhere,. They ignored any obstacle and did the necessary.

But in those days, men had their dreams and made their dreams come true.

Such is required of us today, the necessity is far, far greater. A war today could be terminal and without communication, wars are inevitable.

The best communication is physical contact, the handshake, which clinches the deal. There is no real substitute for a solid communication line and a letter is a solid communication.

It has been well said, that if it is not written it is not true. What people said they said, can be quite wild and yet, put into words on paper, what was said can become eternal.

The Gettysburg speech would have been lost many years ago, if it had never been written down.

All this needs to be said, in order to remind ourselves that the Royal Mail does not require financial viability, in any ordinary sense. The existence of a functioning Royal Mail is the only viability that is valid.

In a Democracy, a Government has certain responsibilities, which have the importance of life or death. One of these responsibilities is responsibility for providing a reliable means of exchange and guaranteeing its adequacy. One task for which the money supply must be adequate, is to finance the Royal Mail.

The Royal Mail should never ever be expected to be self financing. It is a Government responsibility, whatever the cost.

There is no one, who would agree with me more, than our postees, the men and women who work in the Royal Mail.

Like any sane human being, they expect and demand that they be treated with the respect they deserve. Any attempt to exploit their dedication is a failure of respect.

Within that context, we who use the Royal Mail, also owe workers in the Royal Mail, our respect. We must show our respect by our willingness to give in exchange for their dedication, a respectable fee for their services.

At this point we need to apply our wits with wisdom and understand the basis on which we must decide how the money to pay for the Royal Mail, is found. In the first place, the equipment needed by the workers to do their job, will be paid for by the Government, on the grounds that the Royal Mail is a public service required by the nation to create the nation's wealth.

For this purpose the government must have access to money that is not tax payers money, nor money borrowed into existence by some covert device.

Therefore the equipment needed by the Royal Mail to do its job, must have a very special tax free, debt free, funding.

Money to buy and run the sorting offices, which were in special night trains, should have been financed if needed, by new money printed or minted by the Government, for that specific purpose.

Because of the special needs of solid communication lines, financial viability of that service, must be by its value in wealth creation, not by its value in hard cash. The principle by which money should be found for certain needs of the Royal Mail, also applies to the cost and maintenance of all sorting offices, of all forms of transport which replace the footwear of the postee.

Also if we did but know it, to the provision of the local Post Offices.

By restricting the cost of the Postage Stamp to what is the legitimate contribution of the user of Royal Mail, such as the chap who writes to his grandmother for her birthday, we are reverting to the dream of the first postmen, who without a little red van, delivered mail in all weathers to the remotest of farms.

The thought of a 48 p first-class stamp can be put on a back-burner for ever more.

Doctor Edward C Hamlyn MBChB