Postal charges
Sir: Mr Tom Jackson, the Postal Workers' Union secretary, used a curious argument on radio the other day in defence of the forthcoming increased postal charges — those on the Continent are higher! This can only mean that when prices here are as high as they are there, everything will be all right. The postal workers' pay claims, along with the never-ending ones of other unions, will soon bring about this 'desirable' result, and, of course, this will mean more pay claims because of the rising prices caused by these wage increases, and so the whole dreary process will continue. It is useless to say that inflation is caused by high import prices. This is true regarding imported inflation, but increased wages can do nothing to offset this. If unaccompanied by increased productivity they simply add internal inflation to the imported variety.
To us older people on fixed incomes, no longer on the wages bandwagon, this daily devaluing of our money is demoralising. There is nothing we can do about it except to wait as patiently as we can until the inflation balloon bursts. as it will eventually in the absence of either voluntary or statutory wage restraint. Large-scale unemployment will do the trick, and what sympathy can unemployed unionists expect for the unemployment that they will have themselves caused? They will have priced themselves out of their jobs, and that seems like poetic justice to me.
William Slater I Caxton Road, Fallowfield, Manchester.
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