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This closure was not Europe’s fault
• SO now we have no post offices in Belsize where once we had three.
It’s a sorry tale. The Englands Lane sub-post office was closed despite the fact that I and others came up with plenty of good reasons to keep it open. It was closed despite the fact that more than 5,000 residents signed petitions calling for it not to be shut.
The government and anti-Europeans try to blame an EU directive that says postal services have to be opened up by 2011. But no one should be in any doubt that our continental neighbours see post offices as essential services. They will not be allowed to close even if their ownership changes.
This was not Europe’s fault. Nor was it the sub-postmaster’s fault. Jonathan Cohen has struggled to keep his sub-post office open these last few years even as the government has steadily taken away services from it. He didn’t want to close and he wasn’t, as some have suggested, “bribed” to close. The government had decided in advance that this sub-post office and 2,500 others like it would be shut. We should feel sympathy for him and his staff. And we should wish his pharmacies in Belsize and Highgate well as they face an uncertain future without the footfall provided by the post office counters.
The Tories that began this massacre of our post office network. They closed 4,000 branches. The Labour Party has simply continued that policy of death by a thousand cuts.
CLLR ALEXIS ROWELL
Lib Dem, Belsize ward
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