The Government has announced today that a further 2,500 post offices will close by the year 2009 at a saving of around £4 million a week. They say that more and more transactions are being done on line and that with pensions being paid directly into bank accounts, newsagents selling stamps, T.V Licences no longer being available over the counter and other services being switched to sites away from the traditional post office the cost can no longer be maintained.
The news of the closures comes on the same day that a survey is published claiming that online activities are now the most popular way people spend their free time. Not just surfing for porn, or visiting message boards to insult each other or blokes visiting chat rooms to pretend they are Sandra from Guildford who has forgotten her bra again - no the Internet has passed pubs, clubs, libraries - you know all those places where people meet for that basic of human needs - the opportunity to meet other humans.
Well guess what, one of the places in small community's where people meet is the Post Office. Within a five mile drive of my house we have lost five out of seven sub-post offices in the last three years, each one serving what is predominantly an elderly population.
I took two letters to the Post Office closest to work last Friday, I had to take them there because they needed a next day delivery sticker and they wouldn't fit in the letter box. In front of me were a couple sending a parcel to Sweden, one lady sending a letter to the Republic of Ireland, a young lad taxing his moped for the first time and somebody paying for their passport application to be checked. How are these services going to be replicated online?
One of the reasons why rural Post Office's are closing is because of 'blow-ins', townies buying up properties in towns who either only visit once a month or if they do visit more regularly they think the Post Office that doubles as the village shop is too expensive. Yeah, right. You've driven down from the Home Counties in your bourge-mobile to your £400,000 two bedroom cottage for two nights and you don't want to pay slightly over the odds to help support the family who have built the village and its lifestyle which you want to buy a part of. So the village dies as more and more people who have no link with the local heritage buy up the new properties and do there shopping at some hypermarket seventy odd miles away.
A Post Office can be as important in village life as the pub or the church. It's where those who don't drink or worship can meet like minded people over a chocolate hobnob. Somethings in life are more important than mere money, like quality of life for example.
5 comments:
I couldn't agree more Paul, it is just the people who DON'T spend there time online who need these services more than anyone; many 'oldies' still pay by cheque/voucher/stamps at the post office and it is, as you say, the meeting place for those who don't want to frequent the pub of an evening. Also it is ensuring many more miles of driving thereby ensuring 'green' failure, instead of a stroll to the P.O.
My last half dozen or so experiences in post offices is in a 20+ person queue winding around those annoying ribbons on poles which - along with the peopel actually in line - play a double role of preventing other people not in the queue from reaching stuff on the shelves.
200 million savings...add two zeros and you'll be near the total wasted in various computer system failures invested in by the government (all the non-gov companies involved, by complete coincidence, connected in some roundabout way to someone in power)
their!
It is the hypocrisy of the government on this one that galls me. Yes lots of small post offices are making huge losses but that is mainly down to the government taking work away from them by forcing people to use bank accounts or those damned cards, which are now going to be contracted out away from the post offices. Grrrrrrr.
You're both absolutely right. I think the social aspect is important, old people like company and the post office is a good place to meet. Plus why should somebody in their 70's or 80's have to buy a computer to fit in with a Whitehall ideal?
Another point is the compensation paid to the sub post office masters. £30,000 for a 50 year-old living in the back of beyond is not much in my opinion.
...not bad (30K) for some but almost nothing for others. Some will have enough and probably reture; those taht were doing it as a full time job are stuffed because if they ahve to move to get work you can kiss goodbye to the dosh!
P.S. Re my half dozen or so visits to PO's....I meant that as in the last few years not in my whole life!!!
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