Royal Fail

Why has it taken the Royal Mail four working days to move a small package from Bristol to Swindon?  Moreover, why was it sent to Swindon when it is meant to be being delivered to me, here in Crapchester?  I ordered something from a shop in Cheltenham via eBay last Thursday.  They dispatched it to me, via Royal Mail's 48 hour delivery service on Friday, with an estimated delivery date of Monday.  According to the tracking, it arrived at the Bristol Mail Centre on Saturday - and there it stayed until Thursday afternoon, when it was sent to Swindon Mail Centre - an hour or so drive from Bristol down the M4.  There is still no sign of it actually being delivered to me.  Clearly, Royal Mail's idea of 48 hours differs radically from everyone else's.  I've got another item bought via eBay in transit as well - it was posted yesterday, so God knows where it is now or when I'll receive it.  On top of that, they still haven't delivered my new parking permit, which was posted locally early this week.  The old permit expires on Sunday.  I hate to say it, but since they've been privatised, Royal Mail have become an absolute joke.  I don't blame the staff - there don't seem to be enough of them, anyway - but rather what appears to be poor management.  I mean, management doesn't come poorer than taking the better part of a week to move a 48 hour delivery between two depots, neither of which is close to its delivery point.  

But that's the kind of week I've had.  The frustrations with the postal service were just part of the stuff plaguing me this week.  I've also had spats with both the pharmacy and my GP practice.  The former gave me the wrong prescription, a repeat of the one I'd picked up nearly two weeks earlier instead of the most recently requested repeat prescription.  The root cause of this turned out to be because the latter had not approved the repeat prescription because they had decided, for the first time in four years, that they required a blood test before repeating it.  Unfortunately, they haven't actually bothered to tell me this, I gleaned it from the receptionist - the only person in a deserted waiting room in what appeared to be a deserted surgery - but still haven't actually received a formal request for a blood sample from any of the medical staff.  I was told to come back the next day and somebody might do something, or might not.  I haven't been back since.  I ran out of the medication in question - one of which I wasn't supposed to skip unless under medical supervision - last weekend.  Nobody has been in touch to check if I'm OK.  I actually am OK - my blood pressure seems to be standing steady, despite the lack of these two drugs.  I'll go back to the surgery after Easter and see if somebody will explain to me exactly what it they want.  Like the Royal Mail, a service that was, when I first started using it, good, has been rendered utterly inadequate by what amounts to privatisation.  My surgery merged with two others and was then run by the US healthcare company Operose - staff levels fell, service levels plummeting at the same time.  It has since changed hands, but the poor service levels continue - their communication skills, in particular, seem to have gone into terminal decline.  Sadly, this seems to be a fairly average week in the UK these days, a country with a dysfunctional government, rivers full of shit and shambolic, under funded and understaffed public services.