All your parcels are belong to everybody, or, do you know what happens to your parcels when you're out?

As some of you might know, I'm not a big fan of chasing my parcels around Edinburgh between the depot staffed with grunty idiots that's always shut anyway and the local Post Office where you stand in a line for half an hour listening to the owner entertaining a string of socially housed people with nothing but time on their hands with conversations about nothing, but the new Neighbour Scheme courtesy of Royal Mail is even worse!

We were all opted in on 1st October and, in the age of broadly accessible internet, smartphones and computer databases, the only way to let Royal Mail know that you don't want your items to be left with a complete stranger is by displaying a special sticker on your post box... no, you can't go on their website and add your address to a database of opted-out addresses, you can't call them and ask them to do so, you have to fill in a request form for a sticker and give reasons why do you think it's a bad idea to hand over your parcel to a random person?

Well, that's a tricky one, off the top of my head:

- your neighbours don't have to like you;


- you don't have to like your neighbours;

- they might be drunk;

- or stoned;

- or high on prescription drugs and so decide it might be fun to watch a random parcel fly out of their flat's window;

- your neighbours can open it and keep the items and claim they never got the parcel;

- their kids might want use the box and damage your items; 

- they might go way for two weeks on the same day and your emergency parcel of cat food will sit at their house until they come back;

- your neighbours might simply not want to be bothered by the postman and then by you about some stupid parcel.

Supposedly, over 90% people in the 'trial areas' were very satisfied with the new service??  I must be living in some other universe then Royal Mail management, or am I the only one who likes their items delivered straight to them?

So now I have to wait for my sticker for 4 working days (so up to two weeks in Royal Mail jargon) and keep my fingers crossed no parcel will arrive before the sticker...