I'm always surprised to hear that people find the postal service anything other than amazing. As Scunner says, they'll deliver a letter virtually anywhere in the country for 60p. Pretty impressive. I post things out everyday for work and I've found that first class almost always arrives the next day and 2nd class takes 2 or 3 days. Maybe 3 or 4 times a year something I've posted gets lost but no more and considering the volume of posting I do I think that's great.
I agree that answering to share-holders can't be a good thing in instances like this. Share-holders, quite rightly given the point of being a share-holder, expect the price of their shares to rise steadily. If they don't they'll want to know why. A cheap and easy short-cut to this is to make cuts, much easier than improving the service and making people want to use it. Prices will rise, 1st class will become 2 days as standard, 2nd class a week, and that sort of thing will become the new norm. If you want a faster service than two days you'll pay a premium for it. Not good news.
I know that emails etc have made it harder for RM but the increase in online shopping etc should have helped, surely. Someone needs to find a way to help them cash in on that before they give up and privatise it.