One of the few pluses to come out of the EU is that the organization will soon require its member states to disband state monopolies on the postal service. By April 2007, for example, FedEx will be able to compete with Britain’s Royal Mail. The Spectator ran an editorial (free registration required) welcoming the change.

That editorial also produced the following “how many things are wrong with this picture” moment:

Three-year-old Abigail Fielding missed a hernia operation, and will now have to return to the NHS waiting lists, because the letter informing her of the scheduled appointment took more than a week to arrive in spite of being posted first-class.

Poor thing. Hit twice by the wonders of central planning. And this from one of the least socialized economies in Europe.

But perhaps the coming private post service across the Atlantic wil inspire a little change here at home.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2004 at 8:35 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.