The Post Office says it wants to improve its service to the public. So how is it managing that?

Stamps will soon cost more. Two deliveries a day will reduce to one. Thousands of sub post offices in towns and cities will close.

No wonder staff and customers feel sore about the sad decline of a postal service which, for many years, was unrivalled in the world.

It's hard to see what can have precipitated the decline of the service apart from gross mismanagement.

The Post Office still has a near monopoly on deliveries and the rise of junk mail has more than compensated for the decline in individual letters.

Customers might accept having only one delivery a day if reliability could be almost guaranteed but there is no sign that will happen nor any indication the delivery will be at a time convenient to working people.

There will be a drop in business for many post offices when benefits are paid directly into many people's bank accounts from April.

But there seems to have been little effort by postal chiefs to expand the services offered by local post offices to counteract this decline.

Because sub post offices automatically attract customers in every community, they have the opportunity to be local hubs.

Looking at the drab nature of many post offices, there's little sign this will happen.