PUBLIC SERVICE WILL NOT BE RESUMED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

It's now almost three weeks since the clocks went forward and still the "official" clock at Muswell Hill Post Office fails to display the correct time - or any time. For a few days following the change the MHPO showed the old time. Then the clock displayed - in analogue format - 11:57:55. Now it shows exactly 12:00. As a comment on the failure of the public services this is a prime example. [Yes yes I know the post office is one step removed from being a government department by the device of being constituted as a company with all shares held by the government but it's a public "service" all the same]. Nobody cares - least of all the PO management - what this broken clock conveys about its owners. Incuded would be contempt for customers, contempt for staff, contempt by staff, lack of pride and so on.

Another, small instance of the same uncaring, contemptuous mentality, is shown by HMR&C (the Inland Revenue to you and me). Today I received a request for information on a limited company. I ticked the boxes and put the completed questionnaire in the return envelope and what do you know? The questionnaire did not fit in the envelope (and had to be carefully re-folded) and the full return address did not display fully in the envelope window: and, oh yes, I had to pay the postage for something of no interest to me but, apparently, of some use to HMR&C.

When I was much younger - in the 50s - I always looked forward to returning home after a holiday on the Continent with my parents. I knew I'd be returning to a country that worked: public clocks showed the correct time, the streets were clean, the people were clean and respectably dressed, it was quiet, the police were polite (and tall) and, according to Dad, when the Inland Revenue wrote you a letter, it was signed by a "faithful servant". How times change!