[HN Gopher] Royal Mail Rubber Band
___________________________________________________________________
Royal Mail Rubber Band
Author : ykat7
Score : 59 points
Date : 2021-07-11 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| dougSF70 wrote:
| The volume of rubber bands used is equivalent to 1500 Escobars,
| another prolific rubber band user. Strangely Pablo did not get as
| much criticism and complaints about his excessive usage.
| pacaro wrote:
| Has anyone noticed that in the UK, posties work for the Royal
| Mail, whereas in the US, mail carriers work for the US Postal
| Service. It's a curious inversion
| dTal wrote:
| In the UK, you get the bill and you pay with a cheque. In the
| US you get the check and you pay with a bill.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I don't think I've seen a cheque used in decades now. Are
| they even still accepted in shops?
| ddek wrote:
| There had been plans to phase out the cheque in 2018,
| however the portion of the population that still uses
| cheque wield popular sympathy, so the plan was abandoned.
|
| Now the official line is that cheque's will continue as
| long as people use them, but substantial investment will be
| made in making digital transfers the default. This has
| meant replacing the slow BACS and expensive CHAPS with
| Faster Payments, and cash with contactless.
|
| So cheque is accepted almost nowhere, almost dead, but is
| being strung along until the boomers are gone. It would be
| fine if it wasn't such a PIA to handle.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Checks have the advantage that they teach everyone
| patience - whenever someone at the supermarket checkout
| is taking a solid 5 minutes writing a check for $13.92,
| and then the cashier takes another 5 minutes going
| through some complicated ritual accepting the check as
| payment.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'd once seen a show about a murderer in the UK that was caught
| partially due to his use of yellow cable ties that were exclusive
| to the Royal Mail.
|
| A bit of Googling shows it came from the murder of Leanne
| Tiernan. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2116617.stm
| zabzonk wrote:
| If the odd rubber band is the price I have to pay for nice,
| friendly men (and they are almost all men, for some reason)
| turning up at my door, and perhaps helping me if some disaster
| has befallen me, then it's a price I'm willing to pay.
|
| Now, back to watching England getting slaughtered by Italy... oh,
| wait!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > perhaps helping me if some disaster has befallen me
|
| What service are you referring to?
| zabzonk wrote:
| The ones where they look through your window and seen you
| have fallen and cannot get up.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't think that's really their job and I wouldn't depend
| on it!
| zabzonk wrote:
| It's not their job, but in my experience they are pretty
| dependable, one way or another.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I was depending on England's defeat and planned to sing "Just
| one Cornetto" from the back door at final whistle, but it looks
| like I might be disappointed.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I wouldn't bet, myself. England's horrid habit of passing
| backward, which I have seen for over 50 years, may still sink
| them. As my late Dad used to say, you want to play your game
| in the opponent's half.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Oh god. I think what Italy are doing illustrates what I
| mean.
| kypro wrote:
| My dad was a postman. He always used to bring home big bundles of
| these and I'd make rubber band balls out of them. Good times. =)
| Theodores wrote:
| 2005 was peak mail. More letters than ever were delivered then
| and only in one delivery as they had got rid of the second
| delivery by then, with post arriving whenever rather than before
| breakfast. Things started to fall off a cliff in the years after
| that with businesses and government moving online. However,
| during this period, with more letters per address delivered at a
| time, there must have been unprecedented demand for the rubber
| bands.
|
| The Royal Mail also encouraged bulk mail during that time doing
| final mile for companies that were competition and specialising
| in junk mail.
|
| Luckily those days are over and most non elderly people in the UK
| can expect zero letters on most days.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| my uncle was a postman, when I young he used to give me as many
| rubber bands as I needed, from memory they were brown
|
| I made a daisy chain of rubber bands that - when stetched, was
| about 400meters long (to the end of our street). When i let it
| go, I thought something crazy would happen (i was about 6-7)but
| in reality nothing really happened it just shrank fast
|
| I was extremely disapointed, it look many days to do this, I
| learnt at an early age about imagination vs reality
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| I was expecting the same, even though I'm 38! On the upside,
| you dodged what could have been a horrible accident: Ropes snap
| and take away limbs, tug-o-war accidents are horrible and at
| scale - https://priceonomics.com/a-history-of-tug-of-war-
| fatalities/
| morpheos137 wrote:
| He wouldn't have been able to stretch it in the first place
| to dangerous levels of potential energy.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I think our mail systems are probably some of the most wasteful
| aspects of our society. At this point, I really can't imagine the
| need for actual mail to come to my house. Fully 95% of the mail I
| get is adverts, 4.999% are bills (that could be digital), and
| .001% is genuine letters from another person.
|
| All that paper, fuel and wasted human effort to make sure I get
| something I throw away in the recycle bin immediately after I get
| it. It should honestly be a crime and I don't know how it isn't.
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| Whaaat? Very much disagree. I think you are forgetting
| packages. Where I live, the postal service delivers packages
| every day of the week. Sundays included. The mail is a critical
| service, done efficiently and with a smile. The world would end
| if people could not get their packages.
| soneil wrote:
| In most western countries the mail is the official way to reach
| you. Court, legal, tax, etc documents will all come via the
| national post. That's a large part of why they're protected, we
| don't have a good mechanism to replace this. At the very least,
| gig-workers ain't it.
| jrockway wrote:
| The government figured out the ad-sponsored business model well
| before Facebook and Twitter. I only receive junk mail, but I
| guess it subsidizes package delivery that I actually want.
| the_angry_angel wrote:
| FWIW If you're in the UK you can opt out of non addressed
| mail (https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/
| a_id/...) delivered via RM
|
| In 2005 the Royal Mail was fully privatised. Since then I
| personally feel the amount of unaddressed mail has increased.
| But that might be in my head
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > that contemporary red rubber bands are designed to be more
| biodegradable than previously used brown bands, so as to lessen
| the environmental impact
|
| Doesn't this mean less reusable?
| cperciva wrote:
| Not necessarily -- at least, not unless you count people
| reusing discarded rubber bands. Typically the strategy used in
| cases like this is to make the material break down faster in
| the presence of water; assuming postal workers aren't trying to
| get the mail wet, the rubber bands should also stay dry enough
| to be reusable.
|
| I have plastic compost bags which stay intact for months in the
| cupboard but fall apart in 2 days when filled with wet food
| waste.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| At my first tech job there was a guy who had a ball made from the
| rubber bans the postie would leave every day. He had been doing
| it for 2-3 years before I joined. It was twice the size of a
| baseball.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I remember collecting rubber bands from the postie as a child to
| make a rubber band ball. I remember most of them being brown.
| Sometimes our post comes bundled with a rubber band now. I don't
| think I've ever seen a red one.
| Zenst wrote:
| I had 3 small packages arrive this Friday, left on my door and
| tied together in a brown rubber band. Like you, I have never
| seen a red one either, blue one's yes, though rare.
| AstaManasta wrote:
| It seems they no longer use them. I remember having to pick them
| up quite regularly so it's no wonder they consumed so many.
| mPReDiToR wrote:
| I live in York, England.
|
| They bloody well do still use them; I find them on my doorstep
| regularly!
|
| I've got on hanging around the fire smash glass activation
| thingie outside my door, and another around a handle on my
| chest of drawers (can't remember why!).
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Our post is still delivered in rubber bands, but they're no
| longer red.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Quebec, Canada, blue bands here...
| kencausey wrote:
| If you happen to have a relevant source for this information
| the Wikipedia entry could use a citation for that statement in
| the introductory paragraph. Unfortunately personal experience
| and observation is not sufficient.
| detritus wrote:
| Never change, HN.
| kencausey wrote:
| Could you explain? I'm not sure where I went wrong.
| smcl wrote:
| I think this is probably down to unfortunate phrasing -
| at first blush it _looked like_ you 're doing the
| [citation needed] thing on someone who was just adding an
| interesting anecdote to the brown/red band situation.
| However I assume you just wanted to say that this info
| would be an interesting addition to that page, and if OP
| had any idea whether there was any more official info on
| this that would be cool, since the anecdote alone likely
| won't satisfy wikipedia editors.
| Luc wrote:
| Observing non-red rubber bands doesn't make a person more
| likely to have a link to a Wikipedia-accepted source
| article about it, right? So the person suggesting a
| Wikipedia edit may just as well Google it themselves.
| kencausey wrote:
| Yes, you are right I did not try to search for it myself
| before writing the comment. However I did just try and it
| is harder than you might think to search for something
| like this. I suspect if I had a better understanding of
| British English I might more readily stumble onto an
| appropriate phrasing that turns up a source.
| kencausey wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Yes, at the time I wrote the original comment, in the
| Wikipedia page linked there was a comment in the lead
| section of the article: "The Royal Mail no longer uses
| red rubber bands.{{Citation needed|date=June 2020}}". And
| given that the comment I was replying to seemed to be
| from someone local I thought they might be in a position
| to have or find a reference and update the Wikipedia
| article with that, since other comments here seemed to
| agree that the rubber bands are not currently red.
|
| However that sentence has just been removed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Royal_Mail_rub
| ber...
| indigomm wrote:
| Ours seem to be the conventional beige too. Maybe custom rubber
| bands were costing too much.
| zlib wrote:
| Our posties are always littering the streets and even my driveway
| with regular brown rubber bands!
| hughrr wrote:
| The kids clear them up here. In my case I spent several years
| carrying a scooter with about 3kg of the things on the main
| pole back from school every day.
| Zenst wrote:
| Not so common these days and for me personally a shame as was
| always a good source of freebies in that respect, I had to buy
| some a while back and ironically the quality of bands the post
| office use are pretty darn good compared to the ones I
| purchased (which all turned to crud after a few years and kinda
| dried out for want of a better way of explaining how they
| went).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-11 23:01 UTC)