EDITORIAL: Postal service goes full circle
Present state of chaos and unreliability carries echoes of Victorian author’s comments in 1878
“Letters should go with the regularity of the sun.” This was the motto of 19th-century English novelist Anthony Trollope, who, in addition to his prolific writing, spent 33 years working for the General Post Office (GPO). He created many of its delivery routes and systems, including the invention of the red pillar postbox. He believed a postal service was only as good as its reliability, and delays were a failure of trust.
Trollope also believed the GPO should be a conscious servant of democracy. He wrote that “the Post Office is bound to deal out its services with the strictest equity”, regardless of rank or wealth, and that all parts of the country should be served equally, from London to the remotest Irish hamlet...
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