The Post Office has announced the first 180 branches earmarked for closure under government plans to shut 2,500 by the end of next year - reports the BBC.
The first closures are planned for post offices in Kent, East Yorks and the East Midlands and a six week consultation period has begun.
The government says cuts are needed as the current 14,000-strong network has been losing £4m a week.
However, the cuts are actually needed because the government is unwilling or unable to maintain subsidies to loss-making offices, on the basis of their service to the community - often its most vulernable members.
However they do appear willing and able to increase payments to the audit-failing EU's budget by 63% - many billions more a year than subsidising loss-making post offices would cost.
Consumer watchdog Postwatch said that the closures were bad news, but it accepted the government spin that the current network was "unsustainable" (without further subsidy).
The government decided in December that 2,500 closures were required and said at the time that it wanted to help the Post Office modernise, restore profitability in its main offices, invest in new products and look at innovative ways to deliver services.
On Tuesday, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said it would provide funding of "up to £1.7bn until 2011 to continue to support the network" and to enable the Post Office "to modernise and rationalise".
However the government has recently agreed to gift the EU far more - an extra £2.5bn every single year, despite 12 years of the EU failing its audit. Is this a demonstration of the right priorities?
MPs who vote to approve the obvious waste of the EU budget deal when it comes before Parliament in the next session will be to blame for these consequent shortfalls in funding for essential public services.
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2 comments:
Consultations are carried out.
People protest, write their letters, march for to save their post office, but surely it's just a farce when they're closed anyway.
If views are ignored, the only thing, ultimately, that can be done is to resolve to punish the MPs responsible at the next election, by voting elsewhere or campaigning against them. And ensure they know post office closures (or their cause; the amount of money they have voted to waste on the EU) is the reason.
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