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Ballots to postal vote

Vic Barlow
9/ 6/2004

Official statistics have confirmed that in its last financial year Royal Mail somehow managed to miss all 15 of its performance targets.

No mean achievement for an organisation with arguably the most dedicated workforce in the UK.

There again, it is managed by directors who spent over £200M replacing its world-renowned brand name with an unintelligible noun no-one understood.

Given that one of its performance targets was no more complex than to treat our first class mail as err... first class and deliver more packages than it lost it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume the mail service is in chaos.

Would anyone in their right mind choose this precise time to introduce a postal ballot? Nevertheless that's exactly what is happening and given this unprecedented opportunity for a major cock-up wouldn't you just know Macclesfield would be involved?

With a police force famous for leaving its road safety trailer to roll away and destroy the oldest cycle shop in Cheshire; a council that banned a butcher's van from the town centre and replaced it with an army tank; a bypass 35 years in the planning that still can't decide if it's an underpass or a fly-over, will anyone be surprised if the final result of this election is nothing more than a load of ballots?

• The views expressed on this page are those of Vic Barlow and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Express.