Collective Punishment…

All the residents of a city street have had postal deliveries stopped after a postman was attacked by a dog.

They are furious at having to make a six-mile daily round trip to the nearest sorting office to collect post and have slammed the Royal Mail for punishing everyone for a single incident at one property.

This seems frankly bizarre. Why the whole street? If the dog is loose again, it’s loose, and is hardly likely to stop at the street boundary if it sees a postman in the neighbouring street!

Residents have raised this absurdity too:

One angry resident, who asked not to be named, said: 'It's not as if the dog was chasing the postman down the street.

'It's disgusting and ridiculous for them to do this. If it's not OK for the postman to walk down the street, surely it's not OK for any of the residents to walk down it? All the other delivery drivers and gas men have never had any problems.'

Better not give them ideas, Mr Anonymous…!

A Royal Mail spokesman said:'Clearly it is the last resort to suspend deliveries. We continue to work with the customer or dog owner to resolve the issue.

'We do apologise to the affected customers. The service will be resumed as soon as we can be sure it is safe.'

It seems to be deemed perfectly safe by everyone else…