Royal Mail's marquee

Audlem Online still awaits a reply from last Wednesday's first class letter to the chief executive of the Royal Mail – nine days and counting! If ever there was an organisation which should be encouraging people to reply to letters, surely the Royal Mail is it?

In the meantime, it is clear that the Royal Mail's spokesmen on TV and radio are telling porkies – let's be brutally frank – about the state of affairs in south Cheshire and, it appears, much of the North West and the Potteries.

Their performances on BBC regional news programmes have been an embarrassment, as they blame the weather; people not addressing envelopes correctly; saying the problems are isolated; that it will all be sorted in 24 hours; that the teething problems were sorted last September, etc. Our thanks to those Audlem Online readers that who have sent in clips from the TV of these dire interviews.

The Inside StoryCommunications Union officials have also been on TV and, almost certainly, gave a more accurate picture of the chaos. Meanwhile, on Audlem Online's Chatbox, we published yesterday this devastating description of security at the Warrington sorting office, the source of the problems:

"I was absolutely horrified when a friend told me about the antics at the Warrington sorting office over the Christmas period. Her brother is an employee there.

"Due to the ice, the Royal Mail lorries were unable to reverse up the ramps to unload the post, so they were simply turned away.

"Apparently they were just unable to cope with the extra post so set up a marquee in which the post was just dumped and they got temporary staff in to go through it. There was no security set up within the marquee and theft was rife."

Once, the Royal Mail led the world. Over the holidays, there was much comment about whether it was guaranteed that the Queen's head would remain on Britain's stamps if, or when, the Royal Mail was sold off by the Government.

Given the current woes, maybe the Queen will soon ask to have her head removed – not in the Charles I fashion, of course – to avoid association with such an embarrassing fiasco.

This morning, we don't know why, we are confident that reply from the chief executive will arrive!

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