Deliver us from cutbacks
Dec. 12th, 2013 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterWithin five years, those of us who still have home delivery of our mail will stop cursing our overflowing e-mailboxes (anti-spam legislation should help with that) and instead start talking about f-superboxes. Frankly I don't get it.
If we're trying to get people out of their cars, encourage telecommuting rather than gasguzzling-commuting, reduce greenhouse emissions, promote "aging in place" and thereby save the health-care system millions and billions of dollars on long-term care... then surely we need MORE home delivery, whether of mail or other goods and services, not less!
Remember when we had a milkman, a breadman, even someone who delivered fresh fruits and vegetables directly to our door? Well, if you do, you're long since retired and the politicians don't think you're worth bothering about. Of course, those services were provided by the private sector, not by (or contracted out by) a level of government or a crown corporation. But honestly, if the U.S. and the U.K. and indeed just about every other country in the developed world can have six-day-a-week postal delivery, why can't we at least maintain our once a day, five-day-a-week service?
Not only that, but beginning on April Fool's Day 2014, we'll be facing a 50% increase in the price of a first-class-mail (whatever that will mean) stamp! Don't know about you, but I'm going to stock up on those "permanent" stamps that are always worth the going rate!
So five years from now, who will be the people in our neighbourhood? I guess we'll still have garbage and recyclables pickup, police and fire services and hopefully library services to shut-ins. I hope we'll still have door-to-door newspaper delivery as long as the paper edition still exists. And aside from newspapers, presumably the private sector will pick up some of the slack in other areas.
We live in interesting times - but not necessarily for the better!
If we're trying to get people out of their cars, encourage telecommuting rather than gasguzzling-commuting, reduce greenhouse emissions, promote "aging in place" and thereby save the health-care system millions and billions of dollars on long-term care... then surely we need MORE home delivery, whether of mail or other goods and services, not less!
Remember when we had a milkman, a breadman, even someone who delivered fresh fruits and vegetables directly to our door? Well, if you do, you're long since retired and the politicians don't think you're worth bothering about. Of course, those services were provided by the private sector, not by (or contracted out by) a level of government or a crown corporation. But honestly, if the U.S. and the U.K. and indeed just about every other country in the developed world can have six-day-a-week postal delivery, why can't we at least maintain our once a day, five-day-a-week service?
Not only that, but beginning on April Fool's Day 2014, we'll be facing a 50% increase in the price of a first-class-mail (whatever that will mean) stamp! Don't know about you, but I'm going to stock up on those "permanent" stamps that are always worth the going rate!
So five years from now, who will be the people in our neighbourhood? I guess we'll still have garbage and recyclables pickup, police and fire services and hopefully library services to shut-ins. I hope we'll still have door-to-door newspaper delivery as long as the paper edition still exists. And aside from newspapers, presumably the private sector will pick up some of the slack in other areas.
We live in interesting times - but not necessarily for the better!
