With the news that Royal Mail wants to end Saturday delivery, I got to thinking about how I'd try to innovate a way out of the mess they're in. The facts are that the critical mass of letter delivery has gone. It isn't coming back. Yes, I know your grandad likes receiving his bank statements in the post, and it's occasionally nice to receive a postcard from your mum when she's on holiday, but email and IM have comprehensively won. Sure, vinyl sales are up, but stamp collectors aren't going to …
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Wandering down my suburban street this morning, I noticed a manhole cover, with the initials G.P.O. carved into it. The General Post Office was the UK communications monopoly. Created by King Charles I in 1660, it remained a fixture of British life until it was abolished a mere 309 years later. The GPO ceased to exist in 1969. And yet, 44 years later, its brand remains seared on the flesh of the streets. Most of the GPO manhole covers have survived for over half a century - although many…
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VoteUK is no more. In order to precisely show you where your electoral registration office was, I needed to take its postcode and covert it to latitude and longitude. That's the service Ernest Marples provided. A few days ago, the Post Office - in their infinite wisdom - set their legal dogs on those running Ernest Marples. The Post Office charges for the file that they generated which converts post codes to location. It can cost anywhere from £1,000 to £4,000 per year to get accurate data…
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