Monday 17 March 2008

Quote of the day


“ Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and affairs and a reasonable estimate of their fidelity and usefulness - this is the price of our liberty…”

Grover Cleveland

Now Shops that contain Post Offices may be forced to close

One wonders what exactly is behind the current round of post office closures.

There is evidence to suggest that the Defra is closing viable post offices. Now it seems they also want to ensure that those Post Offices they have earmarked for destruction, that they ‘withdraw the whip’ from, actually do go under and close.

They refuse to allow the shops to continue to act as Post Offices and are making any compensation offered for the withdrawal of the ‘franchise’ dependant on crippling their businesses by preventing them providing the likes of lottery tickets, Offering any bill payment services, foreign currency services, or reselling stamps, etc.

They appear to want to force as much as possible of the ‘business’, the soon to be ex Sub Post Offices, have, to use the remainder of the network - Regardless of the cost to the customers, or the Sub Post Offices they are casting aside. Or indeed competition laws.

Clearly if anyone cares about the Post Office’s customers it is the Post and Sub Postmasters and Postmistresses - The staff that interact with their customers, not the higher management of the Post Office, or New Labour.

They seem desperate to shuck off as much as possible of the actual service to the public that the Post Office, as an institution, has provided for us all for so many years.

It seems to be yet another example of a valued institution (probably unintentionally) ultimately destroyed by an inept state trying to turn it from something valuable to British society, part of the glue that holds it together, the hidden infrastructure, into something it never was, nor could be - and retain the value and values it had.