[Air-l] Re: Second post in Britain

[Louise Ferguson]

Well, we still have a second post - in Brighton, too ;-), while in many 
part of the Continent, there is not even one post a day for sizeable areas 
(I speak with personal knowledge of Spain).

This has had many social knock-on effects. For instance, it has contributed 
to the traditional strength of catalogue shopping in the UK (which has I 
think contributed to the strength of e-commerce), and the almost complete 
absence of catalogue shopping in southern Europe (along with trust and 
other issues), and consequent impact on e-commerce. If you can't trust the 
post, have no post delivered (and have to drive miles to collect it), and 
many things get stolen from the post (as is the experience in Spain), then 
you don't do e-commerce. It wold be interesting to compare the relative 
volumes of similar good bought over the Net in different countries.

Louise
Brighton, UK

At 12:21 14/11/2002 -0500, you wrote:


>I am a long-time lurker on this list, and I have followed this thread with 
>interest.
>
>While I was in London this summer, there was much hand-wringing in 
>traditional circles about the decision by Consignia (the "corporation" 
>that has now renamed itself "Royal Mail!") to drop the second mail 
>delivery starting 2002. A sample news story (from the Telegraph):
>
>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/06/14/npost14.xml
>
>People in favor of the decision to drop the "second post" questioned the 
>need for this time-honored tradition in an era of fax and Internet 
>communication.
>
>
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