Seeing red (From The Oxford Times)

Seeing red

6:00am Thursday 9th July 2009 in

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The Royal Mail decision to seal up a postbox in Wallingford for health and safety reasons beggars belief.

The box has been in the same position near a fire station for more than 30 years.

We can only assume that a person with a clipboard has been wandering the streets of Oxfordshire doing a health and safety check on each and every postbox.

Then again, if that had been done, most postboxes in the county would have been ruled out on the grounds of health and safety.

The truth is, postal vans up and down the land are causing a potential obstruction and a safety hazard every time they stop outside a postbox.

Do we care? No, because they are only there for a few seconds, we value the work they do, and, in practice, postal vans stopping at postboxes have no record of causing an obstruction or of harming anyone.

Even the health and safety experts have been heard recently urging us to get health and safety into perspective. Let us have some common sense.