Postman who burned 40,000 letters is jailed

Daily Mail:
A retired postman who burned and attempted to destroy 40,000 letters was jailed for four months today.
David Philip Lewis, 53, from Neath, South Wales, pleaded guilty to damaging around 100 postal packets by setting fire to them and attempting to destroy up to 40,000 more by putting them in skips to be recycled.
Christopher Childs, prosecuting on behalf of Royal Mail, told Neath magistrates Lewis failed to deliver the packages while employed as a postman at Neath delivery office.
Mr Childs said Lewis worked for Royal Mail for more than six years before leaving in October 2004.
Mr Childs said staff at a recycling plant who collected the skips from Lewis' home discovered the bags of post inside and informed Royal Mail.

Now here is the interesting bit ....

He said Royal Mail then sent in investigators who found one skip alone contained 9,308 letters, more than 2,000 of them addressed and the remainder door-to-door mail.

That means about 7,000 of them were Junk Mail.

The investigators estimated a further three skips contained around 30,000 letters, he added. Mr Childs said that in an interview with Royal Mail Lewis also admitted burning two bundles, each containing around 50 addressed letters, but said he thought the skips contained only door-to-door mail.

James Pearn, defending Lewis, said: "Throughout the whole offence, Mr Lewis did not deliberately not deliver addressed mail, was not deliberately hiding mail and was not deliberately storing mail."

Mr Pearn said Lewis was delivering up to 4,000 items a day and was paid extra to deliver the door-to-door "junk" mail.
He said Lewis was leaving surplus door-to-door mail in his van and this built up while he was off sick on two occasions - for six weeks when he broke his ribs and for 20 weeks when he had a hernia.

"On those occasions addressed mail he assumed, wrongly, had been dealt with while he was away from work but sadly wasn't became mixed up with the door-to-door mail which he transferred from the vehicle to his garage," Mr Pearn said.
"When he came to clear the garage he was expecting to find just door-to-door mail and didn't expect to find mail addressed to anybody. "He knew it could get into the wrong hands and admitted to burning it."
He said Lewis had made a "genuine and heartfelt apology" to Royal Mail. "He also wishes me to stress that at no time has he financially gained from the mail not being delivered."

The magistrates sentenced Lewis to four months' imprisonment for destroying mail and four months' imprisonment for attempting to destroy mail, to run concurrently.

When I started reading this I was angry that somebody would deliberately store mail and not deliver it to the intended recipient but as I read on I realised that the fault lies with Royal Mail.
Royal Mail have been losing so much money that they have been increasing the cost of postage and running idiotic schemes like this, which the public don't want. Whenever I receive junk mail I immediately throw it in the (recycling) bin - it is of absolutely no use to me, it is a waste of money and it is bad for the environment. So - Royal Mail - stop delivering junk and let the postman get on with the job of delivering genuine mail and then maybe we will receive it on time.