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Comment: London's post offices at risk
Evening Standard Comment19.02.08
Most of the uproar about the Royal Mail's plans for post office closures has inevitably focused on rural areas. Consequently, there has been far too little organised opposition to the massive scale of closures in London where the post office is also at the centre of local high streets, particularly in poor communities. As we report today, an extensive new programme of closures is planned for the capital - nearly 170 branches by the end of the year, and two crown post offices. This comes in addition to cuts of 300 branches over the past four years which brought the total from 1,175 to 849. As figures from the Office of National Statistics show, there are already far fewer branches per head in London than in the country as a whole.
Ministers claim that the cuts are necessary to reduce the network's £3 million losses a week and that changes to the way benefits are paid mean that post offices are no longer as central to people's lives as they were. But this runs counter to popular opinion. For most people, the availability of a local post office matters far more than most of the issues on which Parliament expends its political energy and taxpayers' money, as ministers would know if they took the trouble actually to listen to their constituents. Even people who do not use their local post office routinely are indignant when it is not there when they do need to send an important letter or a parcel.
As for the Post Office argument that most people in London will still be no more than a mile by road from their nearest branch, this ignores the reality that the branches that remain will be far more crowded and many are already located in convenience stores unsuitable for the purpose. Of course the Post Office will be running its usual consultation exercises. Londoners, councils and the mayoral candidates should demonstrate emphatically that these closures run counter to popular feeling and local needs.
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The truth is that public services have been decimated under this New Labour Government. For all their talk about boosting public services, the reality is that Gordon Brown and his stooges have effectively destroyed any semblance of public service remaining in Britain. The Post Office represents a case in point.
Until some five years ago this country could pride itself on having arguably the best postal service in the world. Under New Labour's stewardship the Post Office has been undermined with foreign companies invited into the UK to cream off the profitable business; a failed Football Association boss has been appointed Chief Executive of the service with predictable consequences; deliveries have been axed and made unpredictable; and thousands of Post Office branches have, and will continue to be shut (presumably this will continue until none are left), to the disadvantage of the vulnerable, infirm, elderly and those who happen to live far away from the nearest town centre.
If these closures are based on an economic argument then the Government better accelerate the closure of all our hospitals and run down all the other unprofitable services that rely on a public subsidy.
It seems that anything New Labour has laid its hands on has been destroyed. Education, health care, transport, social care, policing, local authority services... to name just a few. Just remember the reality next time you hear Brown utter the words 'public services'.
- D Bord, South Norwood
