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Leave it to grown-ups
• THE breakthrough you reported in the post office closure saga is a timely reminder that local MPs can make a real difference (Hopes soar in fight to save post office, March 28).
Emily Thornberry’s hard-fought concession from Post Office bosses that Essex Road Crown post office will only shut if an alternative franchise can be found or if Upper Street and Highbury can handle the extra customers following closure is a real breakthrough, even if the fight must go on.
It’s always easy to posture and pass Town Hall motions but sometimes a touch of grown-up politics – in this case Ms Thornberry’s quiet diplomacy with ministers and the Post Office – is what’s really needed.
What Essex Road post office users want now is everyone working together: our local MPs, the community and even Liberal Democrat councillors. Although judging by Councillor James Kempton’s point-scoring response to your reporter, we might need to rely on the grown-ups.
WILL TANNER
St Johns Lane, EC1
• THE Lib Dems are a party of protest and opposition. Which is why, when given the chance to do something positive, they are stuck.
For years, the Lib Dems have been demanding that the government gives councils more power to do what they want. And with post offices, that’s exactly what has happened: councils now have the power to make post offices part of the services they provide.
Following the examples of Essex County and Camden Council, the Post Office has made a direct offer to Islington’s Lib Dems. It wants to open a branch near the current Essex Road post office in a council building. The ball is firmly in the council’s court.
You would expect that any group apparently so keen to keep post offices open would jump at the chance. But no. They are already making excuses about why they won’t help out, why the post office service in Essex Road must end. You can see them in a mad scramble to blame anyone from the government to Ken Livingstone.
TOM HAYES
St Peter’s Street, N1
• I WAS pleased to see MP Jeremy Corbyn voting with the Conservatives on the Tory motion to halt the post office closures.
If just a few more Labour MPs, such as Emily Thornberry, had voted with the Conservatives we could have stopped the closures nationally.
It baffles me. Our elected representative is continuing to campaign against closures but, given a chance to halt them, she votes with the government on its closure programme.
It is just a shame we have to wait up to two years until the next general election to have a representative who will put Islington’s needs first.
RICHARD BUNTING
Deputy chairman, Islington Conservatives
Halliford Street, N1
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