Royal Mail postie Roy Mayall isn't impressed, not one bit, by the "Love Is All You Need" TV advert. He considers that Royal Mail is failing to deliver and this is what he has to say:
"Here’s a summary of the whole advert, in one paragraph:
There’s a Sikh postie walking along a corridor; a little girl placing
stamps upon a parcel; a pen drawing hearts in red ink upon a sheet of
paper; a man paying for his parcel delivery on-line using a tablet
computer; a shot within a parcel depot featuring parcels running on a
conveyor belt with lasers reading the addresses; delivery to a café (the
café owner opens his arms as if he’s about to embrace the postie)
followed by a series of other deliveries in quick succession: to a
stately home, to a garage complete with garage-band, to a little girl’s
birthday party; a Muslim postie walking passed a training centre with
the words “For Hire” painted on the wall; delivery to a factory; a black
female postie smiling (the only woman postal worker in the advert);
delivery to an upmarket London townhouse; two rain soaked posties;
another Royal Mail parcel depot featuring brand new, sparkling-clean
Royal Mail lorries; a Royal Mail lorry driving passed a remote rural
village; a little girl opening up a letter box in anticipation of a
delivery (an intense light bursts from the letter box like a mystical
sign); that Sikh postie again, in a massive block of flats (an Indian
woman answers the door wearing rubber gloves); another postie dwarfed by
another huge, semi-circular block of flats, followed by the slogan, “We
deliver one billion parcels a year”; a shot of a postal worker raising
his arms in apparent blessing of the contents of a Royal Mail van (he’s
like Jesus blessing the loaves and the fishes) ending with the words,
“We love parcels.”
Everyone is smiling.
All of that to the words of All You Need Is Love:
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need.
And there you have it: the hypocrisy of advanced capitalism in precisely one minute.
The Royal Mail delivers none of that. It doesn’t deliver love. It
doesn’t deliver diversity. It doesn’t deliver a welcoming smile. It
doesn’t deliver to stately homes, to garages or to birthday parties. It
doesn’t deliver hope and anticipation. It doesn’t deliver mail to remote
communities. It doesn’t deliver friendliness in the rain. It doesn’t
even deliver parcels. We do all of that: the men and women of all
backgrounds and ethnicities who work for the Royal Mail. That’s our job.
Now that it is privatised, the Royal Mail’s job is simply to deliver returns to its investors.
For a long time now the Royal Mail has been divided, between
management and postal workers, between those who see it as a business,
and those who see it as a service. The people who commissioned that
advert are the former rather than the latter. It’s not a service to
them, it’s a way of making money."
Continues at:
Roy Mayall - All You Need Is Cash