please empty your brain below
Early morning satire bites- excellent post DG.

strandman | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 8:15 a.m. | #

Don't foget that car tax is now available online too. My local postmistress reckons that was probably done to seal the fate of many of her colleagues.

Have they published a list of POs that are on the death list yet?

Blue Witch | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 8:20 a.m. | #

Progress sucks!

I suppose if running the country was down to you you'd have everyone clock in and clock out as they left their front door every morning...put air on the meter...and ban all corespondence except the ego-centric one-way traffic that is blogging. Perhaps you'd like to see us all wired up to computers...self-made web-cam celebrities!

Are you having a laugh...for someone born to the sound of Bow bells, you show very little interest in sustaining community values...Olymic village better yeah...urrhh.

Gentrification sucks too you Thatcherite facist b'stard!

Sorry...that was a bit extreme.

Bev | 11.12.06 - 8:34 a.m. | #

"There's a lovely antiques shop..." - hahaha!

We have a new gallery, don't you know. It's just what the village needed.

JonnyB | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 8:49 a.m. | #

*wonders whether today is Bev's first visit to DG, or whether s/he just has reading problems...*

Blue Witch | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 8:57 a.m. | #

Sorry, I'm not meant to feed trolls, am I?

Blue Witch | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 8:57 a.m. | #

I know I've been away from the UK for a while--well 20 years actually--but what on earth is a farmers market? Is it what I would call a market--you know, a place with stalls in the street selling fruit and veg?

Laurence | 11.12.06 - 9:03 a.m. | #

Apropos my last, if DG is really bored he can always do a column on unnecessary modifiers.

Laurence | 11.12.06 - 9:05 a.m. | #

Small uneconomic Post Offices only serve the local community. If the local community wants them, they should pay for them out of their local taxation - ie: the council tax, not via a national subsidy.

There's no such clamour for a parallel subsidy for rural pubs.

ian | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 9:51 a.m. | #

21) And with your computer (that everyone has) you can print your own "stamps". And enjoy talking to "customer support" everytime you find a bug in their software.

The latest bug was that the address I was attempting to send to was rejected because it did not have a street name. But the recipient's correct address (as supplied by Royal Mail) does not have a street name because, er, the street does not have a name. It is a tiny village and the house and village name is sufficient.

Doh!

Pedantic Of Purley | 11.12.06 - 10:09 a.m. | #

I thought the boom in eBay would save the post offices, as everyone and their aunty are selling stuff and have to wrap it up and trog off to the PO to send it. But obviously I was wrong. The crazy thing is there is one main and three sub post offices within a five minute walk from my home in north London. They could concievably close one or two of those urban subs, and leave some of the sub post offices in rural areas.

herschelian | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 11:13 a.m. | #

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Adrian Zmed | 11.12.06 - 1:06 p.m. | #

The least used 5\\% of post offices serve an average of 16 customers per week. Admittedly that might be due to the eccentric opening hours of rural shops, but are they really justified?

ian | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 1:24 p.m. | #

Having visited one of the least used 5\\% of post offices during the summer (ten miles up a single track road in the Outer Hebrides), I can assure you that some of them justify their place at the heart of the local community.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 3:55 p.m. | #

Public service not private profit. This is about serving communities, without services and focal points, they die.

Johnny Topaz | 11.12.06 - 4:30 p.m. | #

I haven't visited for a while - I'm delighted to see that your sense of the ridiculous is alive and well.

MrsDanvers | 11.12.06 - 6:05 p.m. | #

So get the Outer Hebridean Council Tax to pay for it: Local services, local costs.

Londoners are already net contributors to the tax budget to the benefit of country folk.

ian | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 6:12 p.m. | #

Great Aunt Annie - wasn't that the Amstrad emailer phone?

Blue Witch | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 7:23 p.m. | #

You'd think there'd be a market for a really simple, easy-to-use, email-only computer that your granny could master in ten minutes. Perhaps no one has been clever enough to design one.

Great Aunt Annie | 11.12.06 - 7:23 p.m. | #

ian - you'd do better looking at England being a net contributor to the Scottish budget. Much more money goes that way...

Blue Witch | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 7:23 p.m. | #

I actually agree with half of the points you made!

sweek | 11.12.06 - 8:14 p.m. | #

Laurence - just to be a bit pedantic, a farmer's market is supposed to be where the farmers sell direct to the buyers, whereas in the regular street markets, the stall holders are all traders who buy from wholesalers. There are also rules about the produce being reasonably local, but that is a bit impractical in London, unless that bloke who was capturing Trafalgar square pigeons and selling them to restaurants goes back into business ...

disgruntled commuter | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 8:47 p.m. | #

This proves that if you push irony to the limits it comes out the other side as fact.

Bit like the Daily Mail.

Murph | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 9:46 p.m. | #

No I understand the irony, but I do think 3/4/6/8(first part)/9/11/13(first part)/14/15/19.
If you live in a rural area you can't expect the same level of service you get in a city. You can't just give everyone a post office close by just because you consider it a basic service when the costs of it are ridiculously high and no one's actually using them. And post offices are less and less needed in modern society.

sweek | 11.12.06 - 10:55 p.m. | #

sweek - you may not need to use a post office, but millions of other bank-account-less mobility-impaired internet-free people do. And that's why 3 is the most ironic reason of all.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 11.12.06 - 11:28 p.m. | #

For a mobility impaired person banking over the phone or the internet would actually be easier. And in rural areas the distance does not matter that much, since anyone living there will need to travel long distances for all types of other services anyway and need adequate transport for that.

Let me put it this way: are you in favour of spending more and building even more post offices in very rural areas?
I have a friend who lives in the middle of the Scottish highlands with the closest supermarket 40 minutes away. People over there choose to live in rural areas and will need to put up with travelling further for so many things - why not for a post office too?

And surely we're not talking millions here.

sweek | 12.12.06 - 1:20 a.m. | #

May you never be 75 and poor.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 12.12.06 - 6:49 a.m. | #

I disagree with your last sentiments, DG.

Murph | Homepage | 12.12.06 - 7:12 a.m. | #

Blue Witch, I was interested to hear about the Amstrad emailer phone. Email phones haven't reached my part of the world yet. I've had a look at one on a UK shopping website and I see it's 15p to retrieve an email - just like the very early days of post when the recipient paid the charge.

Great Aunt Annie | 12.12.06 - 8:05 a.m. | #

I'm shocked to see how many "anti-post office"/"profit is all" folk there are amongst the readership here. Shame.

NiC | Homepage | 12.12.06 - 8:26 a.m. | #

When country folk stop habitually electing tories, they can then reasonably expect the benefits of state subsidies. In the meantime, they should accept the market principles they hold so dear.

ian | Homepage | 12.12.06 - 9:30 a.m. | #

You forgot, its better than closing 70\\%.

Debster | 12.12.06 - 10:01 a.m. | #

My mum owned a Post Office and it was closed down this year. It was the only PO for about 6 miles either way, and was next to some residential housing for old folks. Most of them do not drive, have the internet and have limited mobility. They now have to find some way to either a) get 6 miles to the nearest PO (1 bus an hour) or b) get to the nearest supermarket (15 miles) away by catching three buses.
I use our local PO for posting, stamp buying etc, as we don't shop at supermarkets.
I can't believe all the people in the comments box who think that everyone should just "get used to it" as "city-people" don't want to subsidise people who don't live in London.

IsoChick | 12.12.06 - 1:43 p.m. | #

It would be interesting to see the figures and accounts etc for some sub post offices, and how much public subsidy they are given. If only 16 people per week are using some post offices then assuming about 40 hours of opening a week that means the counter person serves someone every two and a half hours on average. Not only does this mean poor productivity, it effictively means we are subsidising someone to do nothing - an inefficient use of resources. Clearly then post services should be merged with more feasible businesses which can fill that two and a half hours with productive activity or this subsidy be put towards better transport to central post offices where the counters have productivity high enough to make a profit/justify the subsidy.

Kevinho | 12.12.06 - 2:43 p.m. | #

Don't forget, fellow rural folks, that you can boost the turnover of your local post office, and save yourselves a trip into town, by taking out cash from the post office counter. I hardly ever go to the cash point any more, unless I absolutely have no choice.

Loved the post, DG.

I do think that many of the negative commenters are merely displaying their lack of knowledge about the countryside. Some people actually believe that everyone in the countryside is a (loaded) minor royal. If they understood the concept of 13,000 pounds a year for a 40-50 hour a week job (farm hand or home help, say) they might be a little more sympathetic.

Part of the problem with Britain is that we're all out of touch with our inner peasant. It doesn't happen in France.

e | Homepage | 12.12.06 - 7:58 p.m. | #

Great post. I'm so fed up with profit and "monetization" (ugh) being the primary motivating factor in so many people's thinking processes these days. There's more to life, etc.

I spotted this via Plasticbag, which made me very happy. At the same time, it's massively frustrating that such a concept seems radical and cutting edge, when it used to be the key philosophy of many of the UK's now privatised services (railways, water, gas, etc.) in the pre-Thatcher years.

However, more importantly, as no one else has done it, I just wanted to point out that 5 is probably the best pun I've seen since I can't remember when.

Hg | Homepage | 15.12.06 - 8:08 p.m. | #

Bev so harsh. DG you rock...dead funny, post offices who needs them???

matookemaddness | 19.12.06 - 12:31 p.m. | #

myself and partner are to open a pie mash shop on the 27 jan 2007 iam trying to find a site so i can post this news to people who live outside london who may like to visit us in bletchley milton keynes

many thanks

jeff & chele

jeff powers | 24.12.06 - 7:28 p.m. | #











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