Post office closures

Today is the day another round of rural Post offices will face closure. The Post Office is scrapping 2500 outlets around the country. This is a severe blow to many rural communities. For Adam Crozier et al who probably don't live anywhere near a rural community, it must be hard to understand just what difference a local Post office makes. Especially when the local bus service is so impoverished it is hard to get even to the next village and back in less than a couple of hours.

I don't think our Post Office is under threat in this round, but rumour in the village has it that the shop is once again under threat, which of course houses the Post Office. Feel I should mobilise the sprogs during half term to poster the village or something - though the likelihood of them getting out of bed before lunchtime is almost zero.

How on earth do we stop essential services in rural areas being closed down? How do you encourage people to shop locally? Or prevent large corporates from slashing the smaller 'outlets' etc, when they are quite easily supported by the larger ones? I know it is all about profits and shareholders, and to me that will continue to be obscene, particularly when it relates to schools, council services, essential services etc.

Recently, I went to Darlington, and needed to get money from the Post Office to finance the latest "wants" of the sprogs. The queue was huge. We waited over half an hour to get served. Presumably everyone in that queue was in the same situation as myself - there was nowhere else to go to get the service they required - be it posting a parcel, getting money from a PO account etc. And this lack of competition in the majority of PO services, this monopoly, has given them leeway to make such cuts as they are today, which have such a phenomenal impact on rural communities - there is nowhere else to go locally to get those services. Sadly, the growth of competition in other services eg who you use for letters and parcels, has shown the failings in the PO to do even the basics well, and so has led to decreased profits.

Going back to how you encourage people to shop locally, it seems to be a modern mindset. Convenience shopping in some numbskull supermarket, 20 miles away because it saves time is surely the most common excuse. The environmental idiocy of this alone beggars belief, let alone the economics. And not jsut the economics for a household budget, but the impact these supermarkets have on farmers etc, which then, in rural areas, affects those who are your neighbours, friends, etc.

Our shop has, of course, a limited choice of items because of space restrictions. However, firstly, you can walk to it so no need to use the car, secondly, if you ask the shop to get something in eg a crate of pomegranate juice, they will, and thirdly, if your bill comes to £20.01, they don't demand the 1p off you. But, people still decide to get in the car and drive to another town and spend the money with a large corporation who often make only minor attempts to improve the local economy. (I think the Co-op is a slightly different fish in that game, but not by that much).

Although the number of rights we have has increased, we haven't introduced RESPONSIBILITY with those rights. So, in my village of approx 400 people, I could probably ask all of them whose responsibility is reporting the broken street light on the corner (flickering now for well over a week), or whose responsiblity is it to use the village amenities such as the village hall etc so they remain open in years to come, whose responsibility is it to ensure that houses in the village are sold to young families so we keep our primary school for another generation, whose responsibility is it that the bus shelter is kept clean and swept of leaves, whose responsiblity is it to make sure the gypsies behave themselves when they are here, or to be friendly to them so they feel a responsiblity to act like responsible citizens and not trash the green .....etc. Would any of them feel that it is their responsibility?

This brings me to whose responsibility is the WELL BEING of our community?

To me, it should fall firmly on each and every one of our shoulders - those of us who live here. In any community, not just ours, surely the responsibility for wellbeing should not fall solely to the council - parish, district or county - or the police, or some quango at the Regional Development Agency. The problem lies in the fact that those mentioned above meddle so thoroughly in our lives (mainly because so many people are employed in the civil service to do precisely that), in so many areas, that we just leave them to it. Assuming in some naive, old fashioned way, that they must know what they are doing. After all, public sector employees get massive wages, compared to our local average wage, a job for life, and a nice fat pension. So, they must be employed on some sort of criteria that they have the expertise for the job. But they don't. They can't understand how my community works unless they live here, can they?

Broadbrush decisions made at County Council level cannot possibly work in both Carlisle and some tiny rural Cumbrian hamlet. Cuts to public spending, or large corporate spending, are always going to affect the smaller communities, shops etc because they are the ones who bring in least profit, and where less people will shout about the problems such cuts cause. And where a large number of citizens or consumers are likely to be affected eg on a national level, we see the government and corporates employing stealth tactics. And as a nation we are remarkably inept at noticing what is going on (mainly due to the media's perverse approach to telling us news), and doing something about it.

Anyway, I'm off to the shop. There's bound to be something I can buy today which will just help add a few pennies to the balance sheet to keep the shop open. After all, it's my responsiblity to the long-term wellbeing of this community I live in to ensure there is a shop there for others in the future. Oh, and then I'll report that street light.....