I was talking to a friend of mine in London over the weekend and he was saying that you have to get your Christmas parcels in the mail within the next couple of days or delivery by 25th (OF DECEMBER!) is NOT guaranteed. Yikes! He was also saying that there is a new company starting up in the west country using pigeons “guaranteed faster than Royal Mail”…forging ahead into the past, as he put it. LOL. I was thinking though, pigeons isn’t all that daft. You could strap a little USB stick to its leg and very quickly ‘air mail’ a lot of documents! Dave
Yeah, post men are frequently on strike here. Not that I have a problem with that, it can just be inconvenient at times. Talking of pigeons, take a look at this
I told you we live in a 5th world country and here you have it!
wow! Pieter, does your computer really run that slow? I’m surprised you stick around. I remember having dial-up connection, which was very slow and discouraging. But that was 13 years ago! I only used the internet when I was very determined to find some information. I remember clicking on something and then I’d walk away and come back later to see what happened. At the time I had a web site for my business but not everyone had computers at home yet. Usually when I told customers we had a website their response was they had internet at work. Didn’t the UK postal workers just end a strike last year?
@ Patrick, the “story” about the pigeon is just that, a cock and bull story! I’m on satelite ADSL and and can assure you that I’m quite happy with the speed of my computer. I often “talk” to members here and receive replies within seconds. I mainly use my pc’s for business purposes and there also, I have no problems. I’d say almost 90% of my business as shortterm insurance broker is conducted via e-mail and I even have clients in the UK. I’ve cut down on sending out policy schedules and other matter because I can mail most of the stuff to my clients, straight from the big companies main frames. It’s only a pleasure to tell a client: “You will have your documents within minutes” and then receive his/her acknowledgment within another couple of minutes. All our claims are submitted via e-mail and it works like a charm. All relevant documents are sent off directly to the claims handler with no delays. I can check on the progress of the claim at any time I care to. Lovely stuff!!!
The only real mail I get these days is snuff. Everything else is through email or online. Save the trees!
Hadn’t heard of a postal strike on LBC or Sky, where I usually get news from the UK. Chilling stories about cuts to incapacity benefits, though.
AGAIN !!! Can’t they be happy for just a year with what they have, which is by the way a pretty easy job ? What does a postal worker have to bitch about, aside from the pay-check . And that is their own doing because if they were ‘worth’ more they’d be doing what it takes to earn more…but they can’t and so they don’t. Always someone else’s fault, it is. I’ll bet they’re the first to bitch about paying higher taxes, but they sure want a fat government paycheck, don’t they ? Or the same pay for less hours worked. Perhaps the USA can send over a boatload of Mexican scabs; hard-workers who would appreciate a decent paying job that doesn’t require back-breaking field labor.
@Pieter: To be fair, you’re only using the internet to send some text around which is hardly heavy on bandwidth. Taking 2 hours to transmit only 160Mb is painfully slow. The pigeon was 25 times faster !
It would be sods law that a sparrowhawk would eat the delivery pigeon before it reached its destination…my amazon package would be lost forever!
I just got off the phone from a shipper in London. I am having a shipment sent by Royal Mail with signature required, which is more expensive, but he claims is the only way to get around the postal strike. That’s two people (unrelated) who told me now…dunno where LBC od Sky gets their news! lol. Real pain though. I have been waiting 3 weeks for a shipment from McChrystal’s.
I don’t think there’s any official striking, but there’s definitely been talk of wild cat strikes at some depots.
Nobody seems to be looking on the bright side of this. No bills!
rofl