Yesterday I was cross with the postman for leaving a jumble of red rubber bands (what is the collective noun for rubber bands?) on the pavement near home.

Today, I am left depressed at news of another postal strike, this time around it is more widespread than the last one just three weeks ago. Industrial relations at the Royal Mail have been an intractable mess for as long as I can remember, the difference now is that such a state of affairs is even more damaging in the face of recession and the flight to "cheap" online communication channels.

On Radio 4's Today programme the Royal Mail's operations director said the business had had more than 50 meetings with union officials in the past couple of months. Meanwhile, the union has reportedly written to its branches saying "do not co-operate with change".

Brilliant, chaps, just brilliant. Here's a flash: at the end of this sorry saga, when we're all grumbling about paying Deutsche Post or TNT a fiver to send a letter to Scotland, and DM volumes are decimated, redundant postal workers will be able to congratulate themselves on standing firm as they stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the dole queue. The same fate will not, of course, apply to union bosses such as Dave Ward at the CWU. Funny how often union leaders would rather see jobs lost than move on terms and conditions. It is no doubt easy to take such a stand when your own job is never under threat.

Print is obviously among the businesses that will be damaged as a result of ongoing action, and further depression lies ahead as it seems likely there's more pain to come. A ballot of 160,000 postal workers planned for September could herald a nationwide strike in the autumn. Though if it's a postal ballot it could take a while for the results to come in.