The first TV advert from Royal Mail since privatisation was shown over the weekend, during the X Factor and Downton Abbey.

The advert features the Royal Mail Choir, singing their version of the Beatles' All You Need Is Love, while postmen and women deliver parcels to their appreciative customers.

Here's a summary: a Sikh postie; a little girl placing stamps on a parcel; a man paying for his parcel delivery online; parcels on a conveyor belt; deliveries to a café, stately home, garage complete with garage-band and little girl's birthday party; a Muslim postie; delivery to a factory; a black female postie; delivery to a London townhouse; two rain-soaked posties; a Royal Mail lorry driving past a remote village; a little girl opening up a letter box; a postie dwarfed by a huge block of flats, followed by the slogan: "We deliver one billion parcels a year"; ending with the words "We love parcels".

Everyone is smiling.

And there you have it: the hypocrisy of advanced capitalism in precisely one minute.

Royal Mail delivers none of that. It doesn't deliver love. It doesn't deliver to stately homes, to garages or to birthday parties. It doesn't deliver hope and anticipation. It doesn't deliver mail to remote communities. It doesn't deliver friendliness in the rain. It doesn't even deliver parcels. We do all of that: the men and women of all backgrounds and ethnicities who work for Royal Mail. That's our job.

Now that it is privatised, Royal Mail's job is simply to deliver returns to its investors.

For a long time now Royal Mail has been divided, between management and postal workers, between those who see it as a business and those who see it as a service. The people who commissioned that advert are the former rather than the latter. It's not a service to them, it's a way of making money.

We were told many years ago: "Granny Smith doesn't matter any more."

"Granny Smith" is the postal worker's affectionate nickname for you. For the people that we regard as our customers, the people we meet on the doorstep every day. But Royal Mail management don't regard you as their customers. You are merely recipients. Their customers are the people who send the mail in large quantities: the utility companies, the banks, the advertisers, the bulk deliverers, the people who churn letters out by the ton using advanced computer systems, the mailshot companies using lists they've purchased from other advertisers, the conveyors of junk mail and other unwanted material, the people who fill your halls with rubbish, the landfill merchants. Those are Royal Mail's customers, not you. That's the hypocrisy of that advert. They know that postal workers are held in high regard by the public. They know that most of us will go out of our way to look after our customers, that we will do our best even in adverse circumstances, that we will give that cheery smile in the rain. That was always the case in the past, though it's getting rarer.

In the old days, we loved our job. It was great getting out and about delivering the service we knew you wanted. The work was energetic but satisfying. It brought us face to face with our neighbours. And we had a little time to spare back then. There were enough of us doing the job to get the work done and still have enough time left over to lead lives of our own.

Fifteen years ago, the average delivery span was two and a half hours. That's two and a half hours of high-octane energy expenditure: a workout by any other name. It kept us fit, it kept us happy, it kept the endorphins flowing to our brains.

We would get up early to greet the dawn and have the mail on your doorstep by breakfast.

Ten years ago the delivery spans were increased to three and a half hours. These days the average delivery span is four to four and a half hours. Eventually, the endorphins cease flowing and the pain starts to kick in. We walk till we ache. We no longer have time for our customers and we're so dog-tired at the end of the day that we don't even have time for ourselves. We eat, we sleep, we work.

This is called "productivity". Fewer posties doing more work, at a faster rate. In the past decade the company has shed 50,000 jobs, with more job losses promised.

Fewer jobs means more work for me. More hours on my feet. More weight in my trolley. More gates, more doorsteps, more letter boxes. More miles of trudging drudgery on the streets of my town.

The choice of programmes during which to air the advert was telling.

The X Factor represents the illusion of capitalism, that we may find a way out of its servitude one day: that some of us, through good luck or talent, may be given the keys to escape. Downton Abbey represents the reality: a servant class serving a privileged elite.

As a public service our service was to you, the public. As a privatised monopoly our service will now be to the shareholders.