5 March, 2008
Prove necessity
There's a slight problem with this article and the accompanying comments bewailing the loss of Post Office branches in the current rationalisation programme, with 'the hearts being torn from local communities for the sake of commercial viability'.
All very emotive stuff, and no doubt anathema to the cosy fantasies of little Englanders who dream of a 1950s idyll (which barely existed), of drinking lashings of ginger beer on the emerald village green, chatting to the local policeman next to the red telephone box and the thatched cottage with roses around the door.
Back in the real world, 2,500 of 14,000 post offices are closing because people aren't using them. The romantic illusion of a village with a vibrant community spirit, currently thriving but which will be destroyed when the bustling post office closes, is absolute rubbish. Several of the 'threatened' offices serve less than ten customers per week; in many cases considerably fewer.
I don't doubt that those two or three people, possibly elderly, who'll have to travel 3-4 miles to the nearest remaining post office or obtain the same services by other means may experience rather major inconvenience, but if they're an office's entire weekly customer base, it's ludicrous to retain it. Much as I value individualism over collectivism, the state can't, and shouldn't, afford such extravagance.
[Update 15:16:
Here in the Lancaster area, the remotest two of eight post offices to be closed are to be replaced by a two-day-per week 'outreach' service, but the local newspaper's report exhibits the same unrealistic attitude as the Guardian's.
Mrs Owens said: "The outreach is not like having a permanent shop and post office.
"To go to the village hall to get a parcel delivered just does not feel right. It is not a post office – it is the kitchen of a village hall.
"I can understand the situation the post office is in but a community needs that shop."
It
"doesn't feel right"? Sorry, but 'tough'.
No, it's 'not the same', but the existing situation simply isn't working. The idea that a post office could be a 'communication hub' is an compelling one, but if the community really needed the shop, the community would use the shop, and in far too many cases, that isn't happening.
That's my overarching point: people seem to like the idea of their cosy local post office far more than the mundane reality of an office which stands near-empty for most of the week; they don't use the post office, but find it somehow comforting that it's there.]
[Update 11/03/08: Another BBC article, about branch closures in Wales, summarises some of the Post Office's attempts to minimise the impact.]
Posted by Ministry at 12:54
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