The strike is causing a terrible disruption to most everyone, and we feel the isolation and dislocation from out normal expectations of post through the door, and now buying on the internet is useless because it does not make it the final mile.

Watever, the inner reasons for the strike, it will result in changes that will cause the RM being replaced by another service. It will happen, and the customer (you and I) will make it happen, so those people responsible for the strike (including management) may well be looking for a new job.

Crozier will be OK, because he will have made it a smaller, leaner and bitter organisation.

Gold finger, Gloucester, Uk

In most countries local mail is delivered to a postbox NOT the individual house/flat. Just these change would save a vast amount of time and remove a lot of the need for local knowledge. Commercial mail (including the likes of eBay) should have a compulsory machine readble code allowing autosorting locally into rounds. For all I know RM plan something like this. In any case the basically C19 RM cannot possible expect to go on as it is in the days of IM, email and open competion for parcels. Most users do not want business mail eg bank satements by post anyway, still less junk. This is a dying technology in its death throes. The strikes will hasten the end.

Howard W Wortley, Christchurch, Dorset

It is a job like any other, I am tired of all the complaints by the 'workers' (I use the term loosely because at the moment they arn't working!) If you don't like your job, you think your not paid enough or you too bone idle to do the job YOU applied for and got in the first place. Then quit and give someone who wants to work a chance to. Stop moaning about your lot in life and do something about it, this strike isn't solving anything!!

GROW UP!!

D Hertfordshire

Dominic, Watford, UK

You try getting up at 4 or 5 EVERY morning in the pouring rain/sleet/snow/wind, sort out 1,000`s of items for each and every household on your round, AND THEN deliver it. You don`t sit down, you lug heavy items/bags all the time. What planet are you on. What do you do???

Tom, Norwich, UK

I can hardly believe it! I wouldn't have the temerity to criticise any job I had never done, which in relation to delivery postman you clearly haven't, The comments that have been posted since sum the issues up perfectly, as the song goes "Before you accuse, criticise and abuse, walk a mile in my shoes"

Postman, Dewsbury,

Christina Akinuli, Hove....

Cloud cuckoo land, is it?
Actually amost all delivery postmen have to manually sort mail before they can deliver it.
Firstly by dividing it up into "rounds" they sorting out the mail for each round into the order in which it is delivered.
This involves a degree of local knowledge and geography that even a london taxi driver would envy.
The speed at which this is done is frankly astounding, over 60 letters per man per minute (this without an A-Z, it's all done by memory) and sometimes even more.

Mostly a postman's 8 hour day will have 3-4 hours of actual delivery time, the rest is taken up sorting the mail.

Of course, what you actually see, your postman walking up to your door and inserting a letter in your box may look like an easy job, but try doing it upwards of 1000 times in 3 1/2 hours whilst carrying a 40Lb bag of mail and walking up to 15 miles.

Before you castigate our postmen's lack of skill, please try to learn what he actually do.

Paul Clay, Shiremoor, UK

Royal Mail prices for packets and stamp letters are still the cheapest. Special Delivery (product closest to service offered by couriers) service is the best value in the industry. As for bank statements and utility bills that are collected by the RM competitors they are still delivered by posties. And the only reason why bulk business mail is handled by competitors, is the artificially low prices they pay to RM to access its network. RM is not allowed by the regulator to lower its prices to the level competitors charge the big businesses. So in effect RM can not compete on the level ground. How difficult is it to collect bank statements from printers and drop it off at RM mail centres. Even if they sort mail it is much easier to use machinery to sort bank statements than private mail.
My point is, posties and consumers are subsidising the creation of a parallel postal network owned by private shareholders.

Yo, Doncaster,

Postal workers should have our full support,
If their strike fails we will all regret it, the sweeping changes planned by Alan Leighton will be
implemented and Royal Mail will be privatized within two years.
Does anyone remember the shameful history of privatizations in this country?
The rail network was split up and sold and customers have suffered ever since.
I remember the accusations of public assets being sold off too cheaply and huge windfalls for managers and directors.
Royal Mail workers and managers have already been offered phantom shares; these have as yet no real value unless the company is sold off.

Stephen Fisher, Witney, UK

In exchange for 2.5% increase in pay, posies will be required to work flexible shifts starting and finishing at any time of the day. So, for example, if you have kids and your partner is working, I understand why they oppose it.
I also suggest to ask any EU experts to explain what is the real reason for RM changing it’s pricing structure to one that now depends on size of the correspondence.
As for modernisation. Yes it is needed, but bear in mind that final delivery is very labour intensive, and not that much you can do to automate it.
Privatisation? I am sure you have heard about success of British Rail, parts of NHS and I believe the Tube.

Yo, Doncaster,

Many jobs within Royal Mail are very skilled and the view posed by Angela is based on ignorance rather than fact. An organisation employing 160,000 people has people across all business functions.

Most people will embrace change if it is managed properly. Royal Mail has not 'sold' staff its idea of the future hence the strike!

Most staff deliver letters in all weathers and work very unsociable hours to get the mail through. The issues around the strike involve not just pay but also pensions. A backdated move to career average earnings from a final salary scheme and an extension of retirement age by 5 years plus a change to more flexible working, with no extra pay. A huge pension deficit exists because Government pension holidays we taken.

The general public are not aware that even our competitors secure new business from us it is Royal Mail staff that still deliver the letter for the 'final mile'

I am a postgraduate in IT and I hold several professional qualifications.

Neil T, Northampton, Northants

Post Office workers are living in cloud cuckoo land. There is absolutely no skill involved in delivering a letter and therefore they will always below the national average salary. The lack of skill is exacerbated by the fact that technology has reduced the number of communications sent via post not to mention the competition. If one is a post office work and wants decent pay get trained in a skill that is in short supply in the UK.

Christina Akinuli, Hove,