I was hoping by now I would be discussing the overdue resignations of John Stocker and Jennie Page. Sadly, neither of these events has happened.

John Stocker and Jennie Page?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with their names, they are the people responsible for two of the worst examples of chaos and management ineptitude over the Christmas and New Year periods. And whatever gobbledygook you hear to the contrary, the problems they created have yet to be resolved.

John Stocker was brought in last April to set up the new £20m Royal Mail sorting centre at Gatwick.

Jennie Page was appointed chief executive of the New Millennium Experience Company in 1997 to get the Millennium Dome up and running.

At least Stocker has gone. He has been fired, or moved sideways, or demoted, however you choose to describe it. The official-speak version is that he has completed his assignment and is to join the South East team handling new national bonus and incentive schemes.

However, despite his lamentable performance at Gatwick, he failed to do the proper thing and resign.

We all have horror stories about our mail deliveries.

Your undiminished flow of letters to the editor of this paper shows that the problem has not gone away.

My own current rage concerns a package sent first class to London three weeks ago.

It failed to arrive.

Where is it? Is it in a pile of rubbish at Gatwick or Glasgow? Has a disaffected postman dumped it in a dustbin?

And may I remind you that early in January, the Royal Mail made the preposterous claim that the Gatwick centre was running at 2.5% above national efficiency levels!

As for the Dome's Jennie Page, there were many raised eyebrows when she was first appointed. A career civil servant who had been head girl at English Heritage seemed an unlikely choice for such a controversial job.

After the fiasco of New Year's Eve and the attempts to blame everyone else for what went wrong, you might think Ms Page's departure would have been appropriate.

But not only does her £150,000-a-year job appear safe, so does her £200,000 bonus.

Astonishingly, Culture Secretary Chris Smith has agreed to a further £60m being pumped into the project.

It makes absolute sense that leading Dome sponsors have demanded professional theme-park operators should take over both the day-to-day running of the site and an Easter re-launch.

We are now living in a value-free culture in which no one takes the blame for anything. Words such as responsibility, honour and duty have disappeared over the horizon.

Whatever happened to the concept 'the buck stops here'?

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.