Well, we still have a second post - in Brighton, too ;-), while in many part of the Continent, there is not even one post a day for sizeable areas (I speak with personal knowledge of Spain). This has had many social knock-on effects. For instance, it has contributed to the traditional strength of catalogue shopping in the UK (which has I think contributed to the strength of e-commerce), and the almost complete absence of catalogue shopping in southern Europe (along with trust and other issues), and consequent impact on e-commerce. If you can't trust the post, have no post delivered (and have to drive miles to collect it), and many things get stolen from the post (as is the experience in Spain), then you don't do e-commerce. It wold be interesting to compare the relative volumes of similar good bought over the Net in different countries. Louise Brighton, UK At 12:21 14/11/2002 -0500, you wrote:

I am a long-time lurker on this list, and I have followed this thread with interest.

While I was in London this summer, there was much hand-wringing in traditional circles about the decision by Consignia (the "corporation" that has now renamed itself "Royal Mail!") to drop the second mail delivery starting 2002. A sample news story (from the Telegraph):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/06/14/npost14.xml

People in favor of the decision to drop the "second post" questioned the need for this time-honored tradition in an era of fax and Internet communication.

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