Disappearing letter boxes

seem to be becoming more and more common. 

I have been sent numerous photographs of "letter box toppers" recently. These are knitted and crocheted people, scenes, animals, gardens, boats and whales - and almost anything else you can think of - being put on the top of letter boxes in England. They are fun and, for the most part, it seems they are not vandalised. Some of them are individual efforts and others are joint of community efforts. 

We could not do that here. Letter boxes are disappearing. The first one I noticed was the one which was very conveniently just around the corner from where I previously lived. We used it a lot and so did other people. It suddenly disappeared without warning. I inquired. "Oh, there will be building going on at that location. It will go back when the building is completed." Of course it never was. We needed to travel further afield to post a letter. 

Then the letter box at the next most convenient location disappeared. It was suddenly no longer there. No warning was given. Was it used? Yes, it was. Those of us who had lost the first letter box were using it along with those who had already been using it. 

And now, in the past twelve months seven more letter boxes in the surrounding area have gone. In order to post a letter you need to go to the letter box outside the post office in the shopping centre. Even that was not there for some weeks. The excuse was it had been "vandalised".  The reality was that some young idiots had painted their "tags" on it. It could have been cleaned in situ but that was apparently not what the powers-that-be wanted to do. I suspect (and so did the regular staff) they were trying to see how much of an outcry there would be.  It is a busy post office but there are still attempts being made to close it. That would make the next available post office some distance away and neither of them are open on Saturday mornings. 

We keep being told "people don't write letters anymore" and "everyone uses email". In my kittenhood there were eleven deliveries a week. Now there are three one week and two the next. There are businesses which will no longer send "paper" mail because it is considered not to be environmentally friendly.  Perhaps it isn't but we still need a mail service.

Three weeks ago I sent something that could not be emailed to a person about twenty kilometres away. It was sent by registered post to a business address. It took seventeen days to get there. Why?

There is something very wrong with out postal service. It should not be there to make a profit. It should be there to deliver the mail. Perhaps we need to write more letters.