Last meeting of the evening was one I have arranged with the people who said, following my massive postal survey last year, that they would be interested in taking part in a group I wanted to set up to monitor and pressurise local postal services.

The survey found huge problems with late delivery, missed delivery, wrong delivery, no deliver, stolen items etc etc. There was also some praise for individual postmen/women – and the Royal Mail management were good at responding to many of the individual problems – but overall there’s a big problem. (And for those who asked – as a few did! – why does the quality of the post really matter – I’d just ask you to consider, as one example – all those who work from home who miss orders, bills and payments because of post problems).

I went to Hornsey local sorting office a while back (hideously early morning) to learn a bit about how they worked and some of the problems they in turn have. I concluded that if we set up a local group to work with our local sorting offices on local problems that arose – we might improve things on the ground.

I set up BusWatch West Haringey in 2000 and Chris Barker, who took on the lead on this, has turned it into a very successful and influential pressure group which constantly monitors and raises issues on local bus problems and now has a strong voice to champion our local needs. In this light, I asked Chris to come and talk to the group who arrived at The Three Compasses for the inaugural meeting.

The key thing is to really find another Chris – and fantastically our new Chris is to be Mark Galbraith. It isn’t a huge matter of time – but it takes someone who can drive it forward. Mark will be aided by the group. The Group is yet to be named – but I expect it will be something like MailWatch!