Post Office and Public
SIR,—As a Post Office employee with some twenty-nine years' ser%iee, may I be permitted to point out that the critics of Post Office effideney whose letters have appeared in recent issues of the Spectator .irc, in common with the majority of the public, busily engaged in that eXlicrnely popular pastime of trying to eat their cake and keep it. The Public desire an efficient postal service and at the same time increasing radii"' of pounds profit each year to be handed over to the Exchequer for the relief of general taxation. They cannot have both. A generation at°
the Post Office servant enjoyed a status and pay which I estimate at nearly twice that of today, and the decline in efficiency is parallel with that of the Post Office servant
The Post Office no longer offers an attractive or decently remunerative career, and of those who have made the mistake of entering it a large proportion arc busily engaged in seeking openings to more highly re- warded and less arduous posts. The result is a continual exodus to other branches of the public services which offer higher pay, better conditions, shorter hours, longer holidays, less discipline, far greater opportunities of promotion and, if the tales of the departed arc to be believed, expect a much lower standard of efficiency. I should perhaps mention here that but for housing difficulties I, too, would be numbered amongst that joyful band who have kicked the dust of the Post Office off their heels for ever to the accompaniment of higher pay, &c. Owing to its traditions and a hard core of faithful servants who for various reasons are com- pelled to remain, the British Post Office is still probably the most efficient and honest public service in the world, and gives far higher value for its cost than any other organisation under public control. I venture to prophesy, however, that until the paradoxical state of affairs within the public services is remedied and the Post Office ceases to be the Cinderella of the Civil Service, the decline of efficiency will continue and the fault will be entirely that of the public, through their Government.
In conclusion may I suggest that the Spectator obtains and publishes for the information of its readers the figures of Post Office employees who have resigned or transferred to other departments during the past twelve or eighteen months.—Yours faithfully, LANCASTRIAN.
Previous page
