Contempt for country
The campaign to destroy rural post offices is a typical piece of New Labour chicanery. The Government says few people use them. Of course they don't, because the reasons for doing so have been systematically demolished.
The campaign to destroy rural post offices is a typical piece of New Labour chicanery. The Government says few people use them. Of course they don't, because the reasons for doing so have been systematically demolished.
At one time you could buy a TV licence at the local post office, but the contract was transferred to a commercial enterprise Pay Point, which many people find inconvenient.
Then rural post offices were persuaded to join in the computer system Horizon, even though two years later it was decided to pay benefits through banks. They have been robbed of the stamps monopoly and the car-licence monopoly. No wonder 4,000 have closed in the past eight years.
Post Office Card Accounts, the replacement for benefit books, are used by two million pensioners. They will be scrapped in 2010. Another lifeline for isolated people is destroyed. For Tony Blair to claim that 98 per cent of pensioners "chose" payment into bank accounts is a debasement of the truth.
The Government subsidy of £150 million a year - a fleabite in terms of public expenditure - is to go. By coincidence, this is almost exactly the amount paid to MPs: £86 million in expenses and office allowances, plus £39 million in salaries.
The botched NHS computer network costs £20 billion, the foot-and-mouth shambles cost £8 billion, John Prescott managed to squander £15 billion on the railways and there is a £500 billion black hole in unfunded public-sector pensions after the Government surrendered to union blackmail.
Yet the Blairites cannot afford £150 million for rural post offices. Along with foxhunting, foot-and-mouth and the rural-payments chaos which is crucifying farmers, it all demonstrates contempt for the countryside.
W A Davis, Hall Street East, Wednesbury.
