I'm Mandy, Fly Me, Flog Me, Buy Me (or let me loan you bundles of cash on the never-never)

His Lordship, his Mandyness of somewhere near Hull, is a busy little business secretary, isn't he? Not content with telling Gordon which side to put his parting, he is also contemplating bailing out Jaguar and Land Rover (but not Woolies), whilst musing that it would be a fine idea to sell off 49% of Royal Mail.

I expected to read howls of derision from the Brand Republic community but no. Come on team, this is the future of our industry we are talking about here. The ability to reach every house in the land for the same price is crucial to direct marketing. Direct marketing is equally crucial to our postal service. Can you see a private, commercial business trotting up the drive in Truro, or Aberdeen, for the pruice of a first class stamp?

Okay, deep breath, but I actually agree with Tony Wedgewood Benn. This is a public service we are talking about here, not a commercial enterprise. Sure, lots of people would like to run the big metropolitan areas, but no one is going to want all the green bits around them. Obviously it could be run better. For goodness sake, Adam Crozier is in charge. Remember his time at the FA? Unfortunately, he did not do FA. Allegedly he screwed the place up. Now, walking at a steady four miles per hour, he is doing the same thing to the RM. With the help of the unions, of course.

He can't make it pay. OF COURSE HE BLOODY CAN'T. Bits of the business will never make money, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Mandy won't be selling those. He will try to sell off the good bits, for a one-off windfall that we can all say Tata too (Geddit?) when he gives it to some poor, undeserving Indian businesman, or another failing bank.

As a nation, we have to accept a few facts about our post. There is less of it. No one writes letters anymore. Well, obviously some people do, but not as many as they once did, and it is a dying art. The younger generations email, and the older generation who do still put pen to paper are slowly dying out. Businesses still send bills, but this will get less too. More and more correspondence will happen electronically. However, there will always be some mail, and we might have to accept that it won't get there every day.

But so what? Is that such a problem? DM helps to subsidise it, and the government should do so to. Rationalise it, make it as cost efficient as possible, but don't privatise it...if you still want a national service.

Where would I be without surveys?

Just when the muse has left me, and I am wondering where the next blog will come from, another survey hits the streets. This one, from Experian, has some shocking statistics about duplicate mailings. Apparently, some scandalous B2B marketers are still de-duping by hand! Others - now sit down, because this may come as a bit of a shock - don't do it at all.

The big mailers have no excuse for this of course, but we have to realise that the vast majority of B2B mailings are relatively small, and cost is an important factor. In a world where the data is a third of the cost of the stamp, and the list seller tells you that their data is so good even Santa is going to use it, de-duplication is not going to be high on the priority list.

When using their own customer or prospect lists, things nearly always get worse. Let's face it chaps, most people are not very good at dealing with data. Even some data companies I have worked for have had some appalling in-house data.

I know this may come as a shock to my friends at Experian, but no one really cares. Of course, it doesn't do anyone any good to send out duplicate mailings, but quite a few clients would secretly admit that all they care about is hitting desktops. If de-duping is going to cost them, the answer is no thanks.

We should care. Then, naturally, we would all pay £250 per thousand for our data and rightly hold the supplier responsible if it turned out to contain more repeats than BBC1. But, we don't.