LIKE the clocks going back and the appearance of selection boxes in supermarkets, Royal Mail’s winter recruitment drive tells us Christmas is coming.

As far as sending letters goes, the company has suffered grievously from the rise of emails, but Christmas still sees a huge uptick in demand.

Royal Mail remains a huge player in parcel deliveries and we still send Christmas cards in their hundreds of millions - even if we complain about the price of a stamp as we do so.

The Swindon operation, as we note today, is looking for about 760 seasonal workers to help ease the load on permanent staff between mid-November and early January.

Last year’s sale of Royal Mail came only two months or so before Christmas, so the 2014 festive season will be the first time it’s fair to pass judgement on how the privatised entity compares, both as a service and as an employer of temporary staff.

Its record in the latter category prior to privatisation was patchy to say the least, with complaints of poor treatment, poor working conditions and wages being paid late or even not at all.

These issues caused the sort of reputational damage that can often be weathered by a public organisation but seldom by a private one.

For the sake of the seasonal staff and Royal Mail itself, we very much hope that every precaution has been taken to ensure things run smoothly.