The Postman's Overweight

According to a British Government minister, the Royal Mail service is experiencing a decline in volume -- 'figures are down' -- as more and more people use the Internet and cell phones to communicate. A regular postman writing in the London Review of Books says this is bull...

‘Figures are down,’ we say, and laugh as we pile the fifth or sixth bag of mail onto the scales and write down the weight in the log-book. It’s our daily exercise in fiction-writing. We’re only supposed to carry a maximum of 16 kilos per bag, on a reducing scale: 16 kilos the first bag, 13 kilos the last. If we did that we’d be taking out ten bags a day and wouldn’t be finished till three in the afternoon.

The truth is that the figures aren’t down at all. We have proof of this. The Royal Mail have been fiddling the figures. This is how it is being done...

And he continues to go quietly postal in print here.