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Sunday, January 28, 2007

Politician's charter

Stephen Tall has an important link on his site to a petition which seeks to standardise letterboxes. Designed to make life easier for politicians, the background information says that delivering to the public is an important part of political engagement.

We call for legislation to make it easier for voters to be engaged by requiring all letter boxes to be:

1. Located at a clear height
2. Easy to post through
3. Designed to allow leaflets to be posted without destroying them
4. Designed to protect people's hands when posting
5. Dog proof

In addition we call for doors to have the number clearly displayed and doorbells to be easy to find (with defunct doorbell buttons removed).

Anybody who has ever campaigned for anything will sympathise with the sentiments expressed here. Meanwhile, the petition to proclaim St David's Day as a national holiday in Wales, previously featured on this blog, has now got 9,531 signatories.
Comments:
Where do I sign??

He forgot to add they should be within two feet of the pavement, be accessible without having to climb steps, and not be hidden in conservatory walls or elsehere.
 
surely one of those boxes by every garden gate would be a better idea than regulation on letterboxes? They are much more convenient from experience!
 
Oh, the glee with which you shove this tree-destroying rubbish through our doors:)

Do you think most people even differentiate it from the takeaway menus before throwing it all out?

I'm sure I caught Owen John Thomas poking some Plaid propoganda through my letter box yesterday. We've got a cage on the inside of our door though, so it invariably pokes straight back out. Thwarted!
 
It's called the democratic process Ciaran. Oh, and not everybody has front gardens, thank goodness!
 
I know. I can't wait for the Lib Dem leaflet to come through my door. That is if they're still putting their name to them these days...
 
Karen - you can sign here.

As for trying to put all the letterboxes at the pavement I will admit an urban bias. Also the volume and size of my mail (both incoming and outgoing) makes the usual stand alone boxes way to small to be any use.
 
This post by Peter brings back memories of one sad Christmas when I successfully applied for a job as a student-Christmas-postie at Caerphilly’s main post office on The Twyn just a couple of hundred yards or so from Caerphilly Castle. I was given a bag of post to deliver around a large council estate; not Lansbury Park where I and my family lived and from which (prior to winning a place at Cardiff University) I used to walk, run or cycle to my job as a “Junior B Medical Laboratory Technician” at Caerphilly Miner’s Hospital at one end of St. Martin’s Road. It was my first “university vacation” and I spent much of it delivering letters, which included lots of Giro cheques. I got to learn the hard-way how to handle dogs (in packs), streets with no street signs/names, and how to deliver letters while keeping one’s fingers attached to one’s hands (not an easy task). Draft-free letterboxes were the worst, they would snap shut so fast that they could catch a finger or knuckle. I learnt to tap the letter so far in, and then used the flat of the back of my right hand in a quick thump-action to knock the letter through the letterbox thus giving no quarter to dog or letterbox. I am glad to report that I finished that postie job with fingers still properly attached to my hands.
 
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