Postal charges
‘Sir,—Penny postage, introduced . by Sir Rowland Hill to bring the mails to the working people, seems silly today when our Labour Government has the divine right, if not the electors’ mandate, to apply the “userpays” principle. Penny postage also applied here, with a halfpenny rate for second-class mail, until World War I, when it was doubled, but reinstated with the New Zealand map stamp of 1923. While we suffer the typical Rogernomics argument that high postal rates are justified because postal delivery is "labour-inten-sive,” we should remember that under penny postage we had two deliveries daily, even in the suburbs, by the obsolete onespeed bicycle, and the many street-corner postboxes were cleared several times daily. The benefits of computers and the rest of the electronic revolution do not add one iota to the comfort and convenience of the lower classes. — Yours, etc.,
VARIAN J. WILSON. February 20, 1987.
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Press, 21 February 1987, Page 20
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150Postal charges Press, 21 February 1987, Page 20
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