As some of you might know, I'm not a big fan of chasing my parcels around Edinburgh between the depot staffed with grunty idiots that's always shut anyway and the local Post Office where you stand in a line for half an hour listening to the owner entertaining a string of socially housed people with nothing but time on their hands with conversations about nothing, but the new Neighbour Scheme courtesy of Royal Mail is even worse!
We were all opted in on 1st October and, in the age of broadly accessible internet, smartphones and computer databases, the only way to let Royal Mail know that you don't want your items to be left with a complete stranger is by displaying a special sticker on your post box... no, you can't go on their website and add your address to a database of opted-out addresses, you can't call them and ask them to do so, you have to fill in a request form for a sticker and give reasons why do you think it's a bad idea to hand over your parcel to a random person?
Well, that's a tricky one, off the top of my head:
- your neighbours don't have to like you;
- you don't have to like your neighbours;
- they might be drunk;
- or stoned;
- or high on prescription drugs and so decide it might be fun to watch a random parcel fly out of their flat's window;
- your neighbours can open it and keep the items and claim they never got the parcel;
- their kids might want use the box and damage your items;
- they might go way for two weeks on the same day and your emergency parcel of cat food will sit at their house until they come back;
- your neighbours might simply not want to be bothered by the postman and then by you about some stupid parcel.
Supposedly, over 90% people in the 'trial areas' were very satisfied with the new service?? I must be living in some other universe then Royal Mail management, or am I the only one who likes their items delivered straight to them?
So now I have to wait for my sticker for 4 working days (so up to two weeks in Royal Mail jargon) and keep my fingers crossed no parcel will arrive before the sticker...
Cyclists...bloody cyclists.
This is evolving to be a new swear word for XXIst century. I have nothing against cycling in general, used to do it a lot until I burst my knee, but cyclists in the city are like a plague of itch . Annoying, rude, don't want to disappear.
Just today I have witnessed a cyclist who couldn't kept steady when looking around and he still kept looking back and almost swerved into the side of the bus, another one who decided to continue straight on to the pavement when the light turned red, without indicating or slowing down and one that jumped the red light at a busy intersection. Add to this the usual ones who block the buses because they can't get their gears right and although they pedal very fast they are not going very fast at all, the ones that go across the road with the pedestrians but don't get off their bikes and the ones that actually collide with cars because of doing any/all of the above.
Next council elections, I swear I will vote for anyone who will ban cycling in the city centre, or at least put the bikes in the car lane so when they block the entire lane for twenty minutes only a dozen people will be late for work, not three busfuls.
By the way, is cycling like a new mid life crisis thing?
Based on ongoing observation, 90% of city cyclists are middle aged guys in ugly yellow vests and even uglier hard hats and even worse, clad in at least token amount of lycra... going to work on a bike in the vain hope that it will balance the life of too much coffee, cake and sitting at the desk at work, possibly?
Cyclists...bloody cyclists.
