A recipe for guaranteed delivery: post a ripe cheese with every letter

The Rosewall affair signifies everything that is wrong with Royal Mail. The two-and-a-half ton Rosewall sculpture by Dame Barbara Hepworth was acquired by the Ministry of Works and the Post Office in 1963 for a new Post Office Pension Fund building in Chesterfield, where it became a landmark — until last October, when it took a trip to the Bonhams saleroom in London. Royal Mail announced that Rosewall was no longer part of its ‘cultural heritage’, which of course had nothing to do with the £620,000 it was expected to raise at auction. But after much protest it was withdrawn from sale and repatriated to Chesterfield, presumably along with a very large haulage bill.

The whole saga is characteristic of a state-owned near-monopoly obsessed with quick financial fixes and unable to find an economic model that works. Last week it resorted to begging the government for a state-funded rescue package: chairman Allan Leighton and chief executive Adam Crozier wangled a market-distorting £3 billion to pay for ‘modernisation’ costs as well as plugging part of a £5.6