by SIR – Last Friday I received a leaflet from Royal Mail (“Motorist diverts £1,000 speeding fine because Royal Mail failed to deliver”, report, 24 November), offering me a postal delivery service for prescriptions of the NHS. One wonders how well that would work, given that we now rarely receive more than one or two deliveries a week.
Royal Mail’s lack of awareness of their current level of service is mind boggling.
Chris Pilkington
Weymouth, Dorset
SIR – I read the Royal Mail advert (Letters, 24 November) in utter disbelief: “Keep it special. Send a card”.
Royal Mail services have become slow and unreliable, and their rates have increased significantly.
While you’re clearly out of touch with your customer base, you surely realize that the cost of stamps is the only reason almost everyone I know is sending as few Christmas cards as possible this year. Some have stopped completely. We would send cards if we could afford the stamps and had faith that they would be delivered a day or two after they were sent.
Shirley Elomari
shrewsbury
SIR – Only an organization as tone-deaf as Royal Mail could dare to publish an advertisement urging us to send Christmas cards, given the price increases it has imposed on us.
The irony of his advertising obviously escapes him. May I suggest a discount stamp for Christmas cards? That might encourage people to start sending them again.
Tim Lovett
Claygate, Surrey
SIR – My husband’s birthday was November 12. The next day, our lovely mail lady, with many apologies, delivered a bunch of cards and a sizable amount for me (my own birthday was November 1st). Many bore a first-class stamp. According to her (and she has over 20 years’ experience), the problem is that Royal Mail is short-staffed and should be hiring and training more people, but that’s not the case.
Royal Mail’s website states that its first class service “aims to deliver on the next working day, including Saturdays.” Aren’t you selling first-class stamps under false pretenses, knowing that you can’t meet that demand?
Susan Fleck
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – Kris Bartlett (Letters, November 25) sent a first class letter to Oxford, 10 miles from his home, which took six weeks to arrive. I can do better.
I received a Christmas card five weeks ago and was impressed by the efficiency of the sender, who lives a mile from me. When I checked the envelope, which had a first-class stamp attached, I saw that it had been sent in December 2022.
Karen Mullan
Hove (East Sussex)
covid hoax
SIR – Camilla Tominey has shed light on the sham that is the Covid investigation (commentary, November 25).
The prurient relish with which the details of the politicians’ vulgar behavior have been analyzed not only suggests that the legal cast has arrived from the set of No Sex Please, We’re British, but that the central premise is apparently that the lockdown was a good thing and our leaders in general are a bunch of fools.
There is also, as Ms Tominey points out, the risk of the inquiry being hijacked by activists using Covid deaths as a battering ram, when these and lockdown deaths are equally important.
I write as someone whose father was in a nursing home for 18 months and deteriorated surprisingly quickly as a result of draconian and inhumane regulations that ultimately served little purpose. He and thousands of older and vulnerable people did not “go graciously into that good night” because they were betrayed by mediocrities who were obsessed with optics and failed to undertake any kind of cost-benefit analysis.
Families traumatized by their appalling failure will punish these pantomime politicians at the polls.
Dr. Catherine Moloney
Liverpool
Pothole repair failure
SIR – Having worked for county councils, I fully support Ken Mitchell’s letter (November 25) on potholes, particularly his praise for “fixing the gangs”. The disappearance of county and divisional inspectors, who were involved in road maintenance, was, in my opinion, the beginning of the pothole problem, which also coincided with the huge increase in road traffic.
In those days, patching was considered a permanent repair, before preventive maintenance such as surface treatment. Today I see short-term repairs done without any sealing around the edges, allowing water ingress and premature failure.
Stephen Bridgwater
shrewsbury
Nissan Disadvantage
SIR – The news that Nissan will continue to make cars in the UK is welcome (report, November 25). I bought my Qashqai because it was built here.
However, why can’t Nissan trust the product enough to give it a seven-year warranty, like Kia, instead of the paltry three years it currently offers? This fact alone means I have yet to decide what my next car will be, when it should be a given.
Paul Spencer
Thame, Oxfordshire
shed an accent
SIR – I can empathize with Sophie Pender and her experiences that led her to champion the “old news” campaign (“City lawyer fighting the old boys network”, Business, November 22).
I grew up in Northern Ireland and went to Cambridge for my degrees. In April 1965, I interviewed to join a law firm in London whose senior partner was a friend of my mother. The interview was brief and the tone was set when he told me: “If you want to come work for us, you’ll have to get rid of that awful Belfast accent.”
Five hours later I arrived at Belfast airport and was greeted by my mother. After a couple of minutes, she turned to me and commented on my “horrible English accent.”
David Denton
belfast
Cities without banks
SIR – You report (November 24) that cost reductions at Barclays will not affect staff in its customer service branches. This is because it has already closed many of its high street branches.
Here in North Yorkshire, the market towns of Bedale and Leyburn have no banks. They are cities with many small businesses and elderly people, and bank branches were widely used by the population.
Now we have to go to Richmond or Northallerton, both 10 miles away. I was there last week and stood in line for 25 minutes. Other people left in disgust. There was a graph on the performance of banks’ branch ratings for commercial and private customers. Barclays was last.
Bridget Garvin
Garriston, North Yorkshire
Telegraph‘s voice
SIR – I have been reading The Daily Telegraph since 1978. It will be nothing short of devastating if any new owner changes the nature and freedom of the way the newspaper has always reported on events at home and around the world.
Charles Moore is right to express his concern for potential buyers (“It would be unforgivable to allow Abu Dhabi to nationalize the Telegraph and Viewer”, Commentary, November 25). We can’t let him Telegraph become a restricted voice, influenced by owners who do not share our values on freedom of expression.
Christopher Hunt
Swanley, Kent
Drop DAB radios
SIR – It is disappointing that popular stations such as Classic FM are abandoning DAB radios in favor of DAB+ technology (report, November 25). Replacing my two old but perfectly good DAB devices with DAB+ models will cost around £300.
In the face of continued tightening of household budgets and the push to reuse and recycle for the sake of sustainability, discontinuing the DAB service seems an ill-conceived decision.
I’ll vote with my dial in the New Year: Radio 3, here I come.
Dr. Tim Brooks
London E11
Inflated prices
SIR – I filled up my car in Shropshire for 143.9p. On the M25 petrol costs 179.9p. How can this be allowed?
Companions MS Carter
Southern Fleet, Kent
The ingenuity of doctor whocostume manufacturers
SIR – I was interested to read about the 10 worst episodes of Doctor Who (Culture, telegraph.co.uk, November 22). As a child, I would watch the show from the first episode and my imagination would be captivated by the stories. I didn’t notice the creaky sets or costumes (although my parents might have noticed). Perhaps also the production was not so out of tune compared to other shows of the time, such as Muffin the Mule and The Woodentops.
I especially remember “The Web Planet,” and was later very impressed to discover that my new math teacher had appeared in it. He fascinated me to hear about the ingenuity of the couturiers. For example, the multifaceted eyes of insects were plastic tea strainers.
Many years later, upon discovering that the BBC had found the episode and released it on DVD, I purchased a copy and experienced a curious moment when I heard one of the creatures speaking unmistakably in my master’s voice.
jonathan mann
Gunnislake, Cornwall
Reasons to regret the decline of the rough collie
SIR – I was saddened to read about the decline of the rough collie (“Ten dogs on the brink of extinction – and what their disappearance says about us”, Features, November 24).
The Kennel Club listing totally underestimates this wonderful breed. Yes, they need a little brushing, but otherwise they require very little maintenance.
They do not need excessive exercise (unlike, for example, a border collie). They are intelligent, full of character, deeply affectionate, and wonderful companions.
I can’t recommend them enough to potential dog owners.
Andres Dalgarno
Westhill, Aberdeenshire
SIR – As a proud owner of one of the few red and white Irish setters in the UK, I was saddened to read that this lovely breed was given the unwanted accolade of being the most endangered in the country. They have charming personalities: they are full of joy, but they are also calm and friendly family dogs.
However, I cannot understand why a high price is cited as one of the reasons they are not more popular, when they are the cheapest (by half in many cases) of all the breeds presented and cost much less than the countless current races. popular designer crossovers.
Jan Bardey
Kineton (Warwickshire)
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