The imminent death of the second post in Bradford might not seem a big deal to domestic customers but the damage to business is going to be tremendous.

Worst hit will be the smaller businesses who cannot afford to spend the thousands of pounds the Royal Mail is asking to ensure breakfast time deliveries, or who cannot spare the manpower to send staff to collect the post from the sorting office every morning.

Many small companies will find themselves in dire straits if they cannot, for example, begin work on orders as soon as they arrive in the morning's post. Or perhaps they need accounts settled by post before they can make other purchases and keep the business running smoothly. In a highly competitive world, such disadvantages could mean big problems for small firms.

It's tempting to think that in this 21st century age of electronic communications and the internet the traditional postal system doesn't have the same importance that it used to have.

But we are not yet at the stage where e-mail has replaced "snail mail" for everyone and a great percentage of our businesses rely on the postman delivering his bag-load of mail as early as possible each morning.

What makes the new system yet more unfair is that big firms who have large deliveries will continue to get their post as early as possible.

Claims that customers will "get used to the new system" will be scant comfort to the small firms who cannot begin work until the postman comes, and who have to watch their bigger competitors across the road getting their deliveries at the crack of dawn.