The US postal service calculates that a quarter of its revenue is under direct threat from electronic media. Since 1984 the number of fax machines has increased by 1,500 per cent. British Telecom yesterday began an advertising campaign asking potential customers to “consider the fax”. Personal letters have maintained their 10 per cent share of the total; the rest is business usage.Nevertheless, the Post Office’s share of the pounds 30bn-a-year communications industry fell from 20 per cent to 16 per cent over the same period.

But the Post Office is concerned that today’s 24-hour strike over a new package of pay and conditions may prompt customers to question the need for its services.Over the past 10 years the number of letters carried by Royal Mail has increased by half, to about 70 million a day at a time of strong competition from private carriers and burgeoning new technology. In the Nineties era of the fax and ever-spreading computer communications would we really miss the Royal Mail? If customers use other ways of communicating with each other today, why bother with the postal service in future?

Royal Mail is worried that today’s 24-hour postal strike will give a boost to competition from electronic mail between companies’ computers on the Internet and Electronic Data Interchange.
The dispute, the first national postal strike in a decade, highlights the fact that more people are writing letters than 10 years ago, and so far no one has been able to challenge Royal Mail’s ability to deliver to 25 million addresses all over Britain. Subjects such as religious education and art must now be taught using text books.The cost of books accounts for just 2 per cent of all school spending, the report says, and the Government should tackle the issue by allowing schools to bid for book grants.Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said his union had been warning since the early 1990s that spending on books was too low.”The Government is aware of this inadequacy which is why it constantly seeks to divert parents’ attention by unjustly criticising teachers,” he said.. An independent secondary school spent pounds 91 per year while a local authority school had just pounds 21.30 and a grant-maintained school had pounds 50.Its report says school under-funding is becoming more serious by the year, forcing head teachers and governors into giving a low priority to spending on books.Schools must now find money for computers as well as for books, and the introduction of the national curriculum has increased the need for new resources.

In fact, primary schools spent just pounds 14.21 and secondaries were spending pounds 27.54, it said.The study of a representative sample of 12 primary schools and 15 secondary schools throughout England showed a huge variation in the amount being spent. Defence lawyers accused him of trying to prevent the case being heard before the general election.. Primary schools’ spending on books is less than one-third of what they need to cover the bare essentials, an inquiry headed by a former chief inspector of schools said yesterday. Research commissioned by the Book Trust, a charity which promotes reading, revealed that while secondary schools were slightly better off they still spent less than half what they needed.
A separate report from the Educational Publishers Council has revealed that one primary school in five had less than pounds 5 per year to spend on books for each pupil.A committee of inquiry headed by Professor Eric Bolton, who was chief inspector from 1983 to 1991, concluded that primary schools needed to spend pounds 45 and secondary schools pounds 56 per pupil per year.

Earlier this week, he succeeded in getting the trial set for October 1997 at the earliest. Mr Purchase went on to maintain that Mr Aitken had brought the allegations on himself, saying he had taken his “eye off the ball” by becoming a director of the company.Mr Aitken is pursuing libel actions against the Guardian newspaper and Granada television’s World In Action over a number of allegations about his business dealings. I don’t think it undermines the credibility of the report that we didn’t have access to all the material,” he said.At the same press conference, another committee member, Ken Purchase, demurred from the outright attack on Mr James. Instead, the committee had to rely on material supplied by Jane’s, the defence journal. MPs also complained they were denied access to the actual intelligence reports, but were only given summaries by officials, and they called on the Government to be more open with future select committee inquiries.Mr O’Neill denied that the report had been compromised because the committee did not have access to the raw intelligence reports – although he accepted the report would have had greater force if they had seen the material “I don’t think it is shot through with holes. Martin O’Neill, the committee chairman, said yesterday that information had been requested from the Ministry of Defence, and refused.

In a dramatic statement to the Commons, Mr Heseltine confirmed the Independent revelation and asked the committee to investigate.Despite having his imprimatur, the inquiry ran into difficulty. They set up their inquiry after being invited to do so in June last year by Michael Heseltine, the then President of the Board of Trade. “On the matters we have examined in detail, Mr James has proved to be a highly unreliable witness.”The report by MPs went on: “We have found no reason to believe that Mr Aitken was aware of the alleged suspicions over Project Lisi nor any reason why he should have been suspicious himself.”The report was sharply critical of the way BMARC was repeatedly granted export licences by the Government to supply arms to Singapore, despite intelligence warnings suggesting the real destination was Iran.MPs said the affair highlighted “major weaknesses” in the licensing procedures and called on the Government to appoint a senior civil servant to oversee the whole system. “We find that Mr James’s allegations are, in general, incredible,” the committee said.