Electoral Reform in a Toy World of Post and Press

My youth was another existence, to that of my old-age. Our society was a different world to the present day, which itself has a fleeting quality of existence about it, in a world of accelerating change. Or, as HG Wells famously put it: Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe.
In those days, the General Post Office and the local Press were housed side-by-side, in architectural splendour, with a touch of polished granite solidity. Their semi-residential street was like the backbone and brain stem of the town. This was where you received and sent intelligence and information. More serious stuff was a couple of streets down, at the modest but useful public library.
The Post brought, as its highlights, letters and literature, from the secretary of the Electoral Reform Society. The Press, for me, was the letters section of the local daily.
In 1971, just left social science at college, I read "Men Like Gods" by the heretical HG Wells. I disbelieved his prophecy that everyone would be allowed to publish. And I was not much impressed by the book. Re-reading it, in my old-age, I thought the worst thing about it was the title.
This present text, in electronic format, relives that little world of Post and Press, a toy world....