IT LOOKS as though the writing is on the wall for yet another of our great institutions: Royal Mail is dying.

It has been ill for quite a while, thanks to a disease imported from the European Union.

Of the 27 countries which make up the union, only Great Britain is laid low by the disease.

The disease is enforced European competition – which might be called a device for taking over the best bits of our postal service.

This disease could be fought off, of course, with large regular doses of modernisation, greater efficiency, better quality and reduced costs. Frequent injections of common sense to end restrictive practices would improve its immunity to European competition.

One problem: the dinosaurs leading the main postal unions don't like the medication, and the inept management is just that – inept.

The Noble Lord who has responsibility for business, and is well versed in EU laws and regulations, is hiding behind the sofa.

The Communications Union, following the inglorious traditions of the coal and car industries, has chosen assisted suicide as a way out of Royal Mail's ills, by planning a national postal strike. Do we never learn our lessons?

A few years ago the health and safety brigade of New Labour's Panzer Division forced all local councils to carry out "totter tests" on all gravestones in council-controlled cemeteries.

There followed a predictable uproar.

The last time this expensive, juvenile, politically-correct nonsense was foisted on us, all hell broke loose.

Letters of protest went to councils, MPs, and lawyers. Questions were asked in Parliament and much hard-earned cash went on monumental realignment.

Each local council should reply to this stupid edict along these lines: "We have carried out a suitable and sufficient assessment to identify any hazards from monumental stones. Our judgement is that the risk of injury from falling monumental stones is so small that we cannot justify spending one penny of public money to further reduce that risk."