Tonight:
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Last week, in a stunning breach of convention, the British government did something right. Even more surprisingly, it did so after listening to the public and Parliament, rather than commercial lobbyists, officials and consultants. And most unprecedented of all, at odds with its deepest traditions and beliefs, it changed its mind without being forced to.
I am, you'll guess, talking about the plan to take hundreds of millions of pounds of business away from post offices, killing a further 3,000 of them in the process. Until it was canned last week, it looked all set to join that litter of rotten and destructive policies, scattered across the land from Poll Tax Valley to 42-Day Hill, from Dome Boulevard to Privatisation Junction - policies which almost everyone, even the people promoting them, knew would be disastrous but which under the prevailing rules of political machismo could not be abandoned until vast damage had been done.
I blame Margaret Thatcher, sort of. She was believed to have established a template that unpopular was good, unpopular was strong. But she lasted so long only because she chose her fights with care. The public was actually quite keen on most of her supposedly suicidal crusades; she steered well clear of anything truly damaging, such as privatising the railways or messing with the Post Office. The poll tax was the fatal exception that proved this rule.
It was left to Thatcher's dimmer heirs, John Major and New Labour, to make an art form from dogmatic policymaking. But perhaps last week marked a turning point. Perhaps our masters have started to realise that "no compromise with the electorate" is not really a winner; and that changing your mind can be strong, not weak.
Loftier fellow-columnists call post offices "anachronisms" or "more loved than used"; but whenever I go into mine, there's a queue. As for anachronism, the more computer-literate you become, the more you realise that handling your finances online is far less secure than doing them over a counter.
As ministers now agree, post offices are important not just for that much-talked-about, little acted-upon value "community cohesion" but also for the Government itself. A sub-postmaster is the face of the state at its most familiar, personal and unthreatening. But though a big step was taken last week, thousands of post offices are still at risk.
Ministers now need to recognise that the large number of supposedly unviable branches is, to some extent, manufactured - and then un-manufacture it. As a Commons committee found earlier this year, there is "little financial transparency" in the Post Office, with "little known about the allocation of costs to individual offices". Some branches under threat are actually profitable. Others have been refused access to services and equipment which could make them profitable again.
If its new policy is to mean anything, the Government must surely now guarantee that no profitable office will close. It should protect any branch which is the last shop in a village, suburb or estate.
It should no longer discourage people from using post offices for its own services, as it is doing with road tax renewals. It should promise to help, or at the very least not block, the network and individual postmasters from finding new business. It should use its power to impose a levy on Royal Mail's rivals to offset the growing burden of the universal delivery service. In my London A-Z, the post offices are marked with a little star. More still needs to be done to stop the stars blinking off.
Yes, give it to the underdog
CALL it public revenge for the TV phone-poll scandals; call it British sympathy for the underdog; or just call it a laugh. But whatever you call it, last night John Sergeant and the people of Britain yet again triumphed over the pompous judges of Strictly Come Dancing. “This is supposed to be a dance contest,” huffed the partner of one of Sargy's rivals, Cherie Lunghi, as they were ejected and the ex-political editor went through. “Please, please, people at home, vote for the dancing.” Completely, utterly wrong, darling. If it actually were a dance contest, do you think the likes of Sergeant and Lunghi would be anywhere near it? This is light entertainment, not the Nobel Prize. And what could be more entertaining (if less light) than Mr Sergeant's footwork?
Recycling, sarf-London style
FORGET the vagaries of council waste collections. In my part of “vibrant” south London, when you want to get rid of something, you just leave it in the street for a few minutes. I was thrilled the other week to see the policy taken to its logical extremes. An old oven was left outside a house, and stood untouched for some time. Then the owner stuck a piece of paper on it saying “Working”. Within half an hour, it was gone.
Reader views (3)
to heck with EU law! why let a bunch of bureaucrats rule from afar? does anyone still know how to spell sovereignity?
- John Smith, Allston, MA USA, 18/11/2008 07:33
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Andrew, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are clever and brilliant and as usual I agree with everything you have written. You and Boris Johnson have made London great again. You are great. Boris is great. London is great. Life is great.
- Kennite, London, 17/11/2008 17:43
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You fail to mention the EU link regarding the Post Office. Until now the government has maintained that competition law must be adhered to and contracts put out to tender, as it has done with other services such as TV licensing, which have been lost to the Post Office - resulting in many of the recent closures.
So,either the government was wrong,and it did not have to put these contracts out to tender, or it is now breaking EU law.
It is claimed that lawyers may have discovered a loophole in the EU law. I see the hand of Mr Mandelson in all this. He has the contacts and knows that this will give Gordon some Brownie points. It is true that this is good news but wouldn't it be better if our own elected representatives could decide such issues?
- Gill, Birmingham UK, 17/11/2008 15:43
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