Bah! This is a really annoying occurrence! Trust the mail service to go on strike just when you have a bunch of important letters to send and happen to have a few parcels on their way.

We are hugely disappointed to report that the CWU has announced a series of strikes over the two-week period beginning at 7pm on Wednesday 25th July 2007 and ending at 12 noon on Wednesday 8th August. The action will not take place on a national basis but at different Royal Mail sites, at different times, across the country.

Now this strike is not a complete shutdown of all services at all times, certain parts of the chain are going to be striking across this fortnight of striking. For example:

We anticipate that all Mail Centres will be on official strike on Tuesday 31st July
All Regional Distribution Centres (RDCs) and our network drivers will be on strike on Wednesday 1st August
We regret that there will be limited delivery services on Thursday 2nd August
Collections on Thursday 2nd August will be limited to a single collection from post boxes outside of Post Offices. These collections may be earlier than the normal advertised times

And so on...

I don't have any problems with why they are striking. It seems their bosses do not want to negotiate at all with their implementation of a 'modernising process.' Note that this will involve the loss of forty-thousand jobs and reduce the service customers are getting.

I just am peeved as I have a lot of important documents for my Postgraduate course and accomodation in the post...