How right you are. An example occurred three or four years ago in this part of France, when the new postmaster in a small town at the foot of the mountains realized the shamefully inefficient allocation of resources that was caused by his postpeople's practice of running small errands for people in mountain villages. He immediately understood the appropriate reaction was to bill old ladies without vehicles so much a week for bread-carrying or medicine brought up from the town pharmacie.

Would you believe that the fractious French and their communist unions made such a fuss the case got splashed all over the papers and got on TV and everything? That public-spirited postmaster held on courageously, but in the end had to give up, and I believe was quietly moved elsewhere.

That's France for you. But, with the liberalisation of postal services that will serve to make rural distribution even more wastefully expensive (because not offset by margins made on lower-cost urban operations), logic will prevail and soon the rural French will be lucky if they see a yellow van once a fortnight.

Which is as it should be.