I think, like most people who bleat on about a 'decent wage' they get paid a perfectly decent wage and have perfectly decent working conditions. I've been in more sorting offices and loaded more vans than I care to rememeber. The working conditions in the Royal Mail are no different from most warehouses in the United Kingdom.

What they do have though, is the heavy burden of the working class work ethic to carry around, and that must be a major burden to have to carry that through life, so I do feel sorry for them. But not because they don't get given the world on a plate, but because they don't realise how easy it is to do better with their lives. Ignorance really is their worst enemy, and unfortunately it is endemic even in management in that organisation.

Not unlike the ignorance generally attributed to working class Presbyterian Scots with a massive chip on their shoulder, which I believe is also a similarly ridiculous Daily Mail stereotype.

(the Daily Mail is a far-right UK daily - I would hesitate to call it a newspaper - beloved of senior citizens and those who wish to "keep Britain white")

Cheers,
Malc

lawrenson wrote:Not unlike the ignorance generally attributed to working class Presbyterian Scots with a massive chip on their shoulder, which I believe is also a similarly ridiculous Daily Mail stereotype.

(the Daily Mail is a far-right UK daily - I would hesitate to call it a newspaper - beloved of senior citizens and those who wish to "keep Britain white")

Cheers,
Malc

We have the same sorts of stereotypes, and the same varieties of bigot   , I'd imagine, here Across the Pond. I don't think we have any working class Presbyterians, though...  Aside from Kennedy and Obama, all of our Presidents have been either Presbyterians or Episcopalians, and have generally not come from working class backgrounds. I grew up being raised predominately Presbyterian, and the sermons felt like Republican (the country club type, not the evangelical brand) campaign speeches.

MetamorphosisSigma wrote:
We have the same sorts of stereotypes, and the same varieties of bigot   , I'd imagine, here Across the Pond. I don't think we have any working class Presbyterians, though...  Aside from Kennedy and Obama, all of our Presidents have been either Presbyterians or Episcopalians, and have generally not come from working class backgrounds. I grew up being raised predominately Presbyterian, and the sermons felt like Republican (the country club type, not the evangelical brand) campaign speeches.

Thankfully I grew up out with British society and its religion and class systems (the religion thing seems to be more predominant in Scotland than anywhere else, while the class thing seems to be more London centric.) Moving into a county that divides itself based on class and religion is rather odd, and still feels rather odd some 25 years further on. Class and religion are bollocks, and too many people define their thought processes, and live their lives, based on parameters their parents have told them are there. Some evolve and grow, but most just go on to teach that to their kids.

I believe the strikes ended last week, and that the backlog in the mail system is now only affecting London. If you just received an item shipped in August, that's a little excessive, even with the postal strikes. Even the illegal wildcat strikes didn't start taking place until the last two weeks of September. So something shipped in August should have been out of the UK by the beginning of September. Could well have sat in customs for six weeks, but it's always good to hear of things that go missing finally turning up. It's a little reassuring that they get things right eventually, even if it's 3 months later.

No.

There are some large multinationals like UPS and DHL who have a UK wide network and distribute and then deliver themselves straight to the recipient's door. But there are many who do not, and those tend to be the smaller cheaper couriers, the 'internet only postage websites' and those not comming from the USA. These will collect from the sender and deliver to the regional hub and then the package is handed over to the Royal Mail for the final leg of it's journey to the recipient's door.

During strikes, it's this 'final leg' getting the package to the door that is affected by the Royal Mail strikes.

At the end of the line, you get what you pay for. If you pay $60 to FedEx to get a package to someone in the UK, it will get there.

Even with the USPS route, if you use USPS Expidited, or USPS Global Express, the package is handed over to Parcel Force, and not Royal Mail, and so avoids the asshats. Again, you get what you pay for in times of trouble. It's all a case of knowing how the individual companies are set up, and how they choose to operate.