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Loss of post office will only add to real deprivation
• THE disappearance of the post office from South End Road would add to the deprivation of the South End Green area, which has already lost its butcher, its bank, its electrical shop and its laundrette.
This latest blow is not just a local phenomenon but part of the grand scheme of Post Office Ltd for the entire UK.
It must not be dealt with piecemeal.
Under the euphemism of “modernising and reshaping”, the UK is to be divided into 47 areas (much like the dismemberment of our railways). With a little foresight one can see these grouped into profit-based companies suitable for trading on the global casino.
However, all this is contingent upon “European Union state aid clearance” for the government's intended £1.7 billion funding package.
Thus it is revealed that the UK is no longer a sovereign state with the freedom to spend its money in whatever way its democratic institutions may decide.
With power ensconced in Brussels what status or authority is left to MPs who have just voted to sign the EU treaty without holding a referendum?
PO Ltd has appropriated, as a convenient fig leaf, the old, trusty, elliptical logo of the Post Office we used to know. But we have also another company entitled Royal Mail Group Ltd. What do the memorandum and articles of association of these companies have to say?
Who are their shareholders and to whom are these shareholders responsible?
The answers are no doubt buried in the Postal Services Act 2000. Yes, the conspiracy goes at least as far back as that.
For a long time it has been the ambition of the powers that be to reduce all public services to saleable public companies (with toothless regulators) and the EU is quite clear on this.
Democracy does not exist in “consultation” or grovelling petitions or demonstrations but in the empowerment of communities to shape their environment.
It also consists in a sense of community as distinct from the Margaret Thatcher dictum that there is no such thing as society.
RA SOFTLY
Parliament Hill, NW3
Sign up
• I HAVE created a petition on the Prime Minister’s website, petitions.pm.gov.uk/PostOfficeClosed.
I hope as many people as possible will sign it; no notice will be taken of it if it doesn’t get at least 200 signatures.
My petition is not specifically about the proposed closure of England’s Lane (my nearest office) or any of the other Camden offices selected for closure. We should be opposing all post office closures rather than each area simply defending its own office; this fits in with the Post Office’s desire to “divide and rule”.
If the government can afford to keep spending on Iraq, preparations for the 2012 Olympics and Northern Rock, they can afford to keep all the threatened post offices open and, indeed, open more (such as the one in Haverstock Hill).
MARGARET KING , NW3 |
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