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For an urban country, Britain is still obsessed with the countryside to a disproportionate and in my view dangerous degree. Where once politicians wasted 700 hours of parliamentary time discussing whether to impose an unenforceable ban on fox-hunting - far more than they spent on such trivialities as the second Iraq war and the banking crisis - now they argue about the closure of rural post offices.
I'm sorry they're going but it's a sign of how Ambridge is England's spiritual home that the far greater loss of urban post offices is barely discussed.
Round the corner from me is one of 2,500 scheduled for closure. If you like 1930s architecture, it's an attractive building which serves a mixed neighbourhood of council estates for the poor and Victorian houses for the middle class. Every time I go by there is a queue out of the door. We were promised its future was assured. When managers closed another post office further into the borderland between Hackney and Islington, they told customers not to worry because they could go to my branch instead.
Now they will have to travel half a mile to the main street through Islington. For the elderly and handicapped this is quite a journey, but the inconvenience is less important than the decline of their neighbourhood. The post office was not only their bank but a place where they met friends and gossiped, and then went to the small shops nearby.
Soon they will be going to an anonymous building where they won't know anyone and feel almost as isolated from a service they need as villagers in Devon.
New Labour has been hopeless at valuing the emotional appeal of the local and the particular. It's not just small post offices that are vanishing. In education and health, the 10 years of Labour rule has seen small hospitals and schools attacked. Economies of scale save money, and large hospitals and schools can offer a greater range of services.
But people are now starting to realise the unintended consequences of the Government's love of the gigantic. If you're sick, it's no good having a crack team of surgeons waiting to treat you if you drop dead on the long ambulance ride. Meanwhile, everyone except ministers now admits that discipline is crumbling in their new "supersized"' schools because when there are 1,500 or more pupils, teachers don't know who their charges are or what they are up to.
Strongest of all, however, is the inchoate feeling that an anonymous and clumsy central authority is closing local institutions which, rationally or not, people treasure, and there's nothing they can do to stop them. The sense of impotent anger will create a backlash that will do for New Labour one day.
Reader views (1)
Dear Nick,
As a former resident of London from 1998-2006, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The worst things Brits can do is imitate Americans in this bigger is better mentality.
How have these Post Office closures effected mail delivery? I have been exchanging mail with a friend in London for years without a hitch and suddenly 2 letters he sent have not been delivered - one has been delayed for over a month! This is outrageous! You don't just decide not to deliver the mail!
I will look for your comment. If you find anything out I would love to know.
Thank you,
- Aline Marie Hebert, Seattle, Wa. USA, 20/09/2008 02:40
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