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Remembering the post office

August 21, 2013   ·   0 Comments

Dear editor:

Well the pin-stripe kids are at it again; they can’t seem to leave anything alone that works. They are now working on the Post Office. At one time this old institution was known as the Royal Mail and was the servant of the people. The service was good and stamps cost either .03 or .05 cents. We also got two deliveries a day and one on Saturday. Talk about service we didn’t know how well off we were. Times do change. To-day many find their mail at the street corner in egg crate boxes and they can go get it themselves. Many on the Lines have had the post office telling them how high their boxes must be and 100 feet back from a street corner. My box now backs onto an empty field.

Also to put a Rural Road number on a letter is now a no no. If you do you may not get your mail. Too bad the Post Office didn’t tell Hydro, Bell Canada or the Canada Revenue Agency as if they send mail to a R.R. Box you may never see your bills or T4 slips. You know maybe the Post Office are on to something as this is not too bad an idea—no bills.

Of course this is just the start of the master plan; the next step is to eliminate town names such as Kettlebe and Beeton. They have already tested the waters unsuccessfully on this one. The boys have quite a track record but look into the future to see where this nonsense is going to wind up.

The up coming generation use the electronic media for communication and as the volume of those writing letters decrease postal rates will have to dramatically rise as fewer use the service. The post office will become mainly a parcel delivery service. Unfortuna6ely as they do not deliver and their competitors do (U.P.S. and Purolater) over time they will be driven out of business.

Now that the U.S.A. has developed the technology to record everyones e-mail the Post Office will undoubted attempt to develop a system to charge everyone who sends an e-mail in order to maintain their revenue base. As communication at that point will be largely over facilities owned and operated by private enterprise it will be interesting to see if they can tax it. At that point in time the Post Office will largely be a memory.

Tom Carter

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