Friday 12 June 2009

Labour loves the post office



..er...which is why they closed so many local branches

Between 1982-97, the Conservatives closed 3,385. Between 1997-2007, Labour closed 4,801.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but Posts to Blogs - gazillions, Letters to newspapers - 1 I think in a lifetime. Snailmail has had its day. We cannot just keep every loss making thing, just because its an institution. There's a bill to be met.

sobers said...

@Anon: Ebay parcels, online purchases? The internet is great but someone still has to physically deliver stuff.

The main reason for the recent decline is the EU, which won't let us subsidise the smaller Post Offices. Something our pro-EU politicians seem to omit telling us. Plus the govt has actively conived in the rundown of the network by sending the benefit/pension business eleswhere, and letting the BBC licence fee go to Paypoint.

Post Offices are great places - you can do so much through them. We should all use them, or the politicians will close the lot!

Anonymous said...

I like the door to door delivery service, but PO Counters is a grim 1960's experience. There are queues. There are "mum Mum Mum" weans. There are people who want to spend the day on some trivial bit of beaurocracy when you have a thousand things to do.

PO Counters is what is being closed. It loses money. You can get stamps at ASDA, or indeed print your own online. You can buy your Tax disc ( albeit HMG rips you an extra 2-50) online, pay your council tax, buy your Telly Tax ( or join a campaign against it and not buy it ). PO counters is as relevant today as are sailmakers to the Queens Navy.

Its sad, but its over. Actually so is the Queen's Navy, but thats another story....

Anonymous said...

post offices can be a handy place for organisation of the national capital, the small peoples savings as in japan.
Here in Oz we used to have a government owned national bank formed to rein and provide competition to the private banks.its branches were in every P.O.
Thats all too much for "free enterprise" the bank is privatised
and last week bumped up its mortgage rates without any rise in the national reserve bank interest rate . "cost of capital " despite new government guarantees.
The post office is half privatised services to the people must make a profit or the P.O branch closes.
oz