I was just walking home from our village post office when I overheard a conversation that sparked an idea for some social science research, if anyone out there is looking for a good topic.

An elderly man called across the street to the postman, who was on the other side. “Any post for me today, Jim*?” The postman called back without hesistation, “Yes, Bert, a gas bill and an electricity bill.”

It struck me just how much of a social service the postal delivery provides in rural areas. I think it would be a great research topic to examine the benefit provided by this type of ad-hoc social service, versus the sums that social service departments pay on big city centre projects that some would see as faddish and unnecessary.

If this has already been done, then another topic could be ‘how do we persuade governments/those who control social service funds to redistribute money away from the targets generated by their urban-centric mentality?’

The fact that postal workers were involved is also relevant to the strike that has caused chaos in the UK for the past week. (Non-UK readers, see this) One of the reasons the UK post office gets away with being a dubious monopoly is that taking a commercial business approach would mean five deliveries a day in London and one delivery a week in the countryside. But if we recognized, and more importantly had costings on, the value of the social service provided by rural post-people (I can’t bring myself to use ‘posties’ as recommended by the Royal Mail) then perhaps some social services money could be directed to this essential service and away from the traditional crackpot schemes.

• Names have been changed to protect the innocent, mostly because I can’t remember them.