Published: Saturday, 30th January, 2010 12:00pm

Letter: Unacceptable lie of the land

by Correspondent

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WHY do we accept what either are, or are what look like, an awful lot of bare-faced lies?

Some time ago the Royal Mail, on this letters page, said something about there being 'snagging' problems with the move to the new sorting office. The service Caversham gets is now much worse than it used to be, and of course going across town to get your post is a major trek these days.

In what way is that simply 'snagging'? It's not, and never was going to be. In reality the Royal Mail has demonstrated by its deeds that it doesn't care about its customers in the RG4 area. It really is that simple.

In a similar way, Reading Council claimed on Radio Berkshire that there were 'hundreds of thousands' of shoppers in Reading when it snowed before Christmas and that's what led to Reading grinding to a halt. Hundreds of thousands? Pull the other one. There weren't. They didn't. Council ineptitude and self-interest made an admittedly bad situation far, far worse.

Staying with the snow theme, the council has also claimed they're working hard to clear the backlog of unemptied bins. They're not, they've decided to let the rubbish just rot and revert to the normal bin emptying cycle - in Caversham and presumably elsewhere in town too.

These are just a few Reading-specific recent examples. There are any number more on a local and national level. The choice that we - tax payers - have is that they are either bare-faced lies or they are statements so far from reality that the person making them should be removed from their job as they are manifestly incompetent. And if they're bare-faced lies, a) why does anyone waste breath repeating them and b) why do we, tax payers, cough up for the salaries of liars?

Richard Jones, address withheld