I’m outraged about the fact that no one is outraged over what I am outraged about.

 

Before I start, I want to make this unquestionably clear: I absolutely want to alarm you.

 

I don’t know if any of you tech-loving drones have realised it, but there’s something decidedly dreadful and undeniably underhanded going on right in front of our faces and no one is doing a damned thing about it. We have a national crisis on our hands and everybody is sitting around oblivious to the Armageddon-like reality that will soon send nucleonic winter storms rippling through the country. It’s a disgrace, an insult to the notion of liberty and, probably although I have no evidence back my claim, a bid to restrict our freedom of speech.

 

I’m talking about stamps, obviously.

 

I don’t know if you’re aware (I assume not, because otherwise you’d be out on the streets overturning cars and shouting at CCTV cameras if you were) but one stamp is now going to cost you a hefty $1 a pop. That’s an increase of 30 fucking cents from last year. Not only that, but the standard letter is now going to take longer to be delivered. We’re paying more for a service but getting less than what we used to. Now, I don’t know about you, but this really makes me mad. As a stingy bastard who still believes in the power of print, I am downright livid.

 

Now if I want to send a letter, it’s going to cost me a whole dollar and take the best part of a week to arrive. This means that it’s going to cost me an extra 30 cents if I want to send a postcard to my family members to give them a snapshot of my glamorous life. One hundred fucking cents to send a photo of a footpath with the words “I stepped over a used condom here”. That means I’m going to have to choose between sending 12 postcards and a box of goon. How many people would sacrifice a sack of wine for the purpose of sending depressing, tangible Snapchats to family members?! And with these new changes, the delays are going to be extreme. So if I want to send critically important correspondence, say for example a letter to Stephen Curry telling him how much I enjoyed his Geoffrey Rush camel skit on an awards show, it’s going to be a week late and will largely be deemed irrelevant by that date. It’s a rort and it’s rubbish.

 

I was alerted to this miscarriage of justice by my grandmother, a woman who still sends birthday cards laden down with enough stickers you’d think she was a six-year-old at a free craft activities table. She was absolutely disgusted. As a woman who exclusively drinks Coke, hates Steve Martin and couldn’t see why a landmark called the “Nigger Brown Grandstand” had to be renamed, Grandma and I don’t often agree. But this was something that transcended the generation gap and made our collective blood boil. What was worse was that Australia Post pushed the changes over the festive period, when people are too busy being happy to care about real problems in the world.

 

Being a noble member of the press, I returned to work ready for a backlash. I expected an avalanche of anger to come crashing down, with people chaining themselves to postie bikes and picketing post offices. I was ready for civil war and was perched at my desk just waiting for the letter bombs to explode. But there was nothing.

 

Knowing their tendency to use traditional means of conducting business and their outstanding capability to complain, I thought the older generation was the first place to start. I called my local senior citizens branch, and was met with confusion. The convenor told me she hadn’t heard of any outrage, and certainly was not in the midst of coordinating a large-scale display of civil disobedience to fight the changes. My local state member told me he didn’t know the price had risen and said he hadn’t sent a letter through the post for some time. I went a step higher and tapped on the shoulder of my federal elected representative and didn’t even get a response.

 

I was appalled. We were now being forced to pay through the nose to send a letter and nobody cared.

 

Now, before you keyboard warriors (hi Kettle, my name is Pot) start telling me about the wonders of email, I know that letter sending is down. The prevalence of sending messages via the postal service may have seen a decline in recent years, but it hasn’t plummeted as much as Bill Cosby’s popularity.

 

While it’s still a hot trend for me, I can see the practice of utilising a national public service to dispatch messages catching on to with the wider population once again. Writing a letter to someone is such a catalyst for affection and it requires such minimal effort. Once people realise that they can fulfil the same amount of obligation as attending a party or enduring a long phone call without having to actually hear the person’s whiney voice or be in the same room as middle-aged guests who wear singlets with sleeves down to their belts, the craze will be ignited once more. Sure, you still do have to eventually leave the house to post the thing, but you can use that as an excuse to show off your sick new roller skate sneakers.

 

Letter writing could come back once people remember how delightful it was and crave its return, like that time when Mark Latham didn’t have national platform with which to broadcast his idiotic ideas or Shannon Noll. However, like narrow-minded festival organisers may bar Nolsie from reaching the dizzying heights of commercial success, this price hike may stand in the way of the humble letter’s comeback. And I feel powerless to stop it.

 

I’d attempt to start a letter writing campaign against Australia Post but that will only line their pockets further.

 

These days are dark.