As a regular user of local postboxes, I too, like Mr. Hudson (April 4), have been mildly irritated by their sudden failure to divulge how often, and when next, we might expect them to be cleared.

But I have thought long and hard about what Mr Hudson says he was told by the Royal Mail, and I may well have completely missed some fundamental point, but I still fail to see how declining to display specific collection times on postboxes is done "to meet the needs of the Disability Discrimination Act". In what way does specifying collecting times actually offend any such legislation?

Perhaps the railways would like to take advantage of this argument; instead of announcing set departure times for trains, they could merely say that trains will leave for various destinations at regular intervals during the day at unadvertised times to suit the management.

Michael Blakemore,

De Grey Terrace,

York.

Updated: 16:56 Friday, April 11, 2003