Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• A GREAT irony that the plaque in honour of Sir Rowland Hill – founder of the modern postal service back in Victorian times – should have been erected in this, the year in which it took a full month for some Christmas cards to arrive thanks to the bungling management of the Royal Mail, (A stamp of approval for postal visionary, February 24).

How appropriate too that the plaque was put up near Sir Rowland’s one-time home close by today’s Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.

For it was that very hospital where many patients missed important medical appointments because over a century after Sir Rowland’s system was implemented, our high-tech whizzbang society failed deliver their notification letters in time.

I wonder, as our emails and texts are increasingly clogged up with unwanted advertising junk, whether it might be a good idea to start training up pigeons again?

F ANDERSON, NW3