Normally you have to read science fiction to glimpse a world where the impossible has been realised - time travel, space flight at warp speed, teleporting, etc. But for a true lurch into fantasy try Dickens or Trollope. These masters of Victorian fiction have created a parallel universe in their books in which something inconceivable in 21st-century Britain can, miraculously, happen every day. In their world they have something called the Royal Mail that enables letters to travel at speeds faster than four miles an hour. Theirs is an alternative reality where the first post arrives before dusk. Indeed theirs is a world so amazing that there are enough posts every day for one of them to actually be the first.

Listening to someone from the Royal Mail being interviewed on the radio at the weekend and apologising for the fact that Nasa can reach Pluto, X-Factor stars can move from being supernovas to black holes, and life on distant planets can emerge, evolve and face extinction, all in the time it now takes to deliver a Christmas card from Deal to Penge, I wondered how long I would have to wait before science fiction became science fact. And time travel gets invented. Because then I could go back to the reign of Queen Victoria and experience the unparalleled joy of posting a letter one day and knowing someone would receive it the next.

However, I was nudged out of my reverie by the reminder that it was indeed possible to send something through the post on Tuesday and be sure it arrived on Wednesday - if you use “special delivery”. Which is to say if you spend much, much more.

Far from feeling reassured this service existed, I was enraged at what I was being told. There used to be a service that guaranteed next day delivery. It was called the first class post. But now that's been downgraded to make way for “special delivery” - essentially the same service but now much more expensive.

This whole process - by which first class becomes second class, second class becomes message in a bottle and special delivery becomes a way of subsidising the chairman's handsome remuneration package and golf club membership is just another example of a trend the late, great Kingsley Amis identified - the great business principle of “Sod The Public”.

STP management practice involves charging more for the same product, or even for a lesser version, by rebranding it as deluxe, organic, classic, executive, limited edition, couture, bespoke, grass-fed, milk-fed or design-led. Classic (or even couture) examples of goods which are still sold in accord with STP principles, even in these credit crunch times, are scents, watches, brown spirits and contemporary jewellery. Watches in particular are elaborate devices for transferring money from the vain to the unscrupulous. There is no more point in spending more than £50 on a watch than there is in buying an extra limb or a spare heart. In chronography, as in life, two hands and one sound ticker is all you need.

Unless you're monitoring postal deliveries, in which case a sun dial and the patience of a saint might be more useful.

Mockery is good for faith

I've been intrigued by The Times's coverage of the atheist service of lessons and carols that the brilliant Natalie Haynes and several other friends have organised. Anything involving Natalie, Stewart Lee, Richard Dawkins and Ben Goldacre is bound to be worth listening to. Especially when it is such a powerful affirmation of the strength of Christianity.

I know that the whole point of their exercise is to fling ridicule at believers and affirm the vigour of unblinkered rationalism. But the very act of seeking to appropriate, colonise and subvert a Christian service at this time of year underlines the hold the rituals and structures of the Church have on the public imagination. More than that, Christmas touches the hearts of successive generations because the story at its heart - the story of God made flesh, the power that shapes the universe becoming a vulnerable child to share in our suffering, indeed to take it on his shoulders - is the most beautiful and powerful of narratives. And that story has inspired the greatest art we know - from Raphael to Bach, Dickens to Donne.

When we say God is not mocked that is not an edict, warning or ukase.

We're not banning the mockers. It is precisely the opposite. The more focus put on the Christian faith, whether by mockery, satire or subversion, the more powerfully the force of its message shines through.

Down for the count

I am delighted Bruce Forsyth will be getting his knighthood shortly. But why, still, no K for Christopher Lee? I don't begrudge McKellen or Gambon their honours, but Lee is quite simply our greatest living screen star. He is 87 next year. A career in which he has played Counts, from Dracula to Dooku, cannot continue with him still a commoner.

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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