Results tagged “post office closures” from Birmingham Mail - Is It Just Me

Perhaps the time has arrived when we should draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. Democracy is a sham. Birmingham has started a battle to keep its post offices but that same battle is being repeated all over the country. We even have the brass necked hypocrisy of ministers voting to close everyone else's post offices while- with one very personal eye on the next election - campaigning to save those in their own constituencies.

The fact the outcry and battles are nationwide should perhaps suggest that the people - that's you and me, the people who pay MPs and the business diploma-laden bosses of Royal Mail - do not want to lose a service which can be traced back to 1516 and has served the public well - or at least until the current lot took over - since 1635. It really does take some doing to lose money for the first time in almost 400 years.

But what we want does not seem to count. First private firms, Dutch and German, were allowed to stick their snouts in the profitable bits of the postal service with help from the unelected in Brussels, then Royal Mail management decided to see themselves as some sort of private equity outfit, turning a profit at any cost to keep shareholders happy.

Forgotten amongst all this is the fact that we are the shareholders and I defy anyone to find it writ in stone somewhere that the Royal Mail has to make a profit. The whole point of a public service is that it serves the public, providing for their needs and if that involves a cost to the public purse - our money again remember - then so be it. If MPs don't like it then they are always free to seek alternative employment after the next election.