Reflections tones and illusions - # 08/204
Photography through the window of a new furniture store provides a complex vision.
http://www.ukhomeideas.co.uk/ideas/furniture/contemporary-furniture/exciting-contemporary-furniture-from-dwell
The new store occupies what was the Central Post Office............closing post offices is a sign of how the electronic age is radically changing the way things are done; how we administer our interaction with the "form filling" bureaucracy and how we communicate by phone and e-mail. Many feel that Post Office closures are ripping the heart out of local communities. That's an extreme view, but it is widely held. It fails to see that change is the normal course of life. How is it in your country?
Post office closures aren't an issue where I live - it's hospital closures that are a problem. But where my relatives live, in rural Yorkshire, it is an issue. Closing the Post Office means that the elderly now have to take the bus about 45 - hour to deal with their pension checques and bills. That is, if the bus service doesn't shut down.
ReplyDeletePost Offices are changing rapidly in Australia, too. They are either closing or being franchised out. Either way the service is altering because the demand is altering. And it is the folk who do not use the "new" services who will suffer and these are invariably older folk (says she!). Eventually it will not be possible to receive a pension cheque - they will all have to be electronically deposited. Cheques will cease to exist.
ReplyDeleteAs you sum up - the world changes. Many might not call it progress ...
... and in France the Postal Service is getting privatized. ... and the small furniture shops are closing (IKEA replacing)...!
ReplyDeleteHi Roon! First of all many thanks for your comment on my post of 08.08.08 at 08h08 at Blogtrotter, now in Kos, Greece! It was great to read you there. Second, sorry for the long delay to come here, but August was a terribly busy month, as everybody else seems to be in vacation…
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, I found sometime now to land here and enjoy your blog.
It seems that post offices are closing everywhere; people don't send letters anymore... ;))
Now, if you find some truffles, please don't forget that we don't have them here... ;))
Wish you a great weekend!
Well of course on the Isle of Man we still have carrier pigeon! No, we do have Post Offices obviously. They are pretty safe. They are so sparse, we are down to the barebones in terms of area that no deadwood to amputate. If anything the P.O. thrives here as it is used for many purposes that the modern age still finds impractical on an island. I for one hope it stays that way even though I have embrassed the new tehcno world, I still like to receive a letter. Airmail too. I can't send a pakgage through the laptop.
ReplyDeleteThe reflection takes me back to good old film and those ghostly double exposures. Another thing I miss in the digital age, but not the processing.
There used to be about 4 Post Offices in the centre of Nottingham, but now there's one. The queues around lunchtime are that long, that they can stretch out into the street. Not everyone has the Internet, and as Babooshka says, you can't use the computer for everything to do with letters.
ReplyDeleteHuhu, whose is that reflection I see. That cannot be you ;-))
ReplyDeleteJust scrolled down your week's photos and almost paused to comment at each one (may do so yet) and then thought I probabably wouldn't comment on this as photographically it is perhaps the least attractive of the bunch but of course the text says it all.
ReplyDeleteI regret not having photographed some of the POs that have closed around here. The camaraderie that existed in the local sub-POs doesn't exist at the one in town with its now long queues.