Comment: Posties, among the true heroes of the crisis

It’s worth remembering where the Royal Mail was in the public perception before the crisis.

Unions were truculent, seemingly always on the verge of calling a strike. The service was a source of complaint. Letter and parcel deliveries were getting ever more expensive.

And if you bought the shares when they floated in 2013 at 330p, you have seen them more than halve.

So the business was far from loved in the City either.

Perhaps it was understandable if the view was that Royal Mail would, and perhaps should, soon become a small arm of Amazon.

How different things are now. Along with the NHS, binmen and postal staff are among our heroes.

Postmen and women work tirelessly and at some risk to deliver letters and parcels to folk trapped inside homes, some of whom are lonely, all of whom miss contact with the outside world.

Typically, postal staff earn about £20,000 a year. If it is true that once this crisis is over we are going to have a reckoning about who is really worth celebrating in this country, posties are near the top of the list.