fens, fares and freedoms

I've finally managed to reload Windows, after a load of false starts that seemed personally tailored to get me as wound-up as possible.

I wouldn't mind, but I was late back, having been out with my brother Asinus and his family at their old fen's Advent fair, which always has an international flavour and shows how a village can touch the world in ways that the cosmopolitan life can only hint at.

For a start, one stall manned by a German lady sold paté made on-site at the Steinhart family farm near Heidelberg with the help of a local Steiner school, while another sold crib-figures made from wood in the Holy Land. Ugandan gifts were on offer from children from the villages set up by the Watoto movement that many churches through the world have reached out to and been enriched by the experience. Closer to home, I wasn't so sure about the chocolate wines, but others seemed to like them, and I picked up a book on birdwatching from XV, the local charity shop.

I wouldn't like you to think I'm seeing things through warm fuzzy glasses, for the old fens certainly have their problems - like parents who take the saying that it takes a village to bring up a child too far and deprive their offspring of parental input; or eejits who buy cheap booze from supermarkets then, out of sight sell them to said feral youths. Or plans to conform to governmental house-building targets by erecting estates on flood-plains, or else land that presently absorbs rainwater to mitigate the effect of precipitation on lower-lying houses in this low-lying area of England which at present needs to have the water pumped out of it.

But there's something valuable about communities, either those which exist in villages, or which still survive in parts of towns and cities. It sometimes seems that the government is determined to urbanise great swathes of the land, having already impoverished many rural communities socially by removing their post-offices and making things hard for communities to come together in, say, pubs.

Case in point: East Cambridgeshire District Council recently banned a poetry-group called Turning Point from hosting a popular reading-night in the Royal Standard Inn in Ely, because it doesn't have a spoken-word licence. Luckily, the reading-night was rescued by the town's Lamb Hotel - but what in the name of Sadie McGlumphur's pony is a "spoken word licence"? In these days when it is apparently an arrestable offence to function as an Opposition MP, do we now need licences to celebrate the glory of the English language, let alone speak out in defence of our communities?

Anyway, it's time for bed, and I've said my piece, so I'm just about grumpy enough to get a sleep now. Night-night.

Post Offices and the meaning of "election"

When the Cambridge News came through our letterbox today, the fact that our post office has been saved from closure actually made me feel a bit guilty that, of the 23 branches threatened with closure in and around the county, only one was reprieved. 22 are due to have their doors closed forever.

This was never an even battle. Based on the profitability of individual post offices in an environment where services were being peeled off like layers from an onion and reconstructed in cyberspace, it was a David-versus-Goliath battle with the country as the doomed giant and central government manically throwing stones.

I'd like to take just four post-offices marked for closure as examples.

Although it had never featured in the original criteria, it had been intimated that post-offices would not be closed if they were the only shop nearby. In fact, all four closures in Fenland, the most remote area of the county, leave residents with no retail amenities of any sort nearby - and I link to Cambridgeshire ACRE's (Action with Communities in Rural England) analyses:

Christchurch, proposed to be replaced with a mobile service for 1 hour on weekdays, nearest permanent branch 5 miles away in Upwell;

Benwick, proposed to be replaced with a mobile service 3 hours per week, to be confirmed, nearest permanent branch 4 miles away in Doddington;

Wisbech Harecroft Road; no replacement - other branches available in this rather large town one-fifth of whose population is retired; and

March - as above, but a quarter of population retired.

The Government's targets in the May 2007 report The Future of the Rural Post office Network are for 95% of the total rural population to be within 3 miles of a post-office, and 95% of the population in postcode districts in remote areas to be within 6 miles of a post office. I've found it difficult to find the official designation of Fenland, but it looks as if we may be up against averages here. Also, it appears that mobile services may count as post-offices, even though, as in the proposed case for Christchurch, they may only be in the village for an hour every weekday.

There's also the issue of post-offices being hosted by pubs: a good idea, but what if somebody for whatever reason has a medical or moral objection to entering one? Again, the above document has suggested churches taking up the slack - but what if a church-run post-office should find that it has, for example, been unwittingly passing on pornography, or material militating against religion?

I don't think it's realistic for a business to be expected to run at a loss. But the post-office isn't entirely a business, it's a government department. If, say, hospitals, police stations or barracks were expected to show profits or fold, Great Britain would be an even more dangerous place to live in.

And yet a postal service can serve its community and make a profit. The United States Postal Service makes a massive profit precisely by providing the services that people need to be part of a connected society. The Post Office could never hope to make as much as we are a small island, but a profit could be made. Whereas the USPS provides 157 services, the PO provides 93 and falling. It doesn't help that providers of some amenities are putting surcharges on any method of payment other than direct debit.

And there's the rub. The Post Office seems determined to collude in the downfall of its rural branches, even though for many villagers it is their main source of socialisation and local knowledge. A small side-article in the Telegraph of 18 September stated: "[A] study by the Post Office found that families could save...if they...paid their bills...online".

This county seems to be perceived as relatively rich by the Government, but possession of a car and/or a mortgage do not confer membership of the Institute of Directors. I suggest that the powers that be at the moment pull out their dictionaries and look up the meanings of "rural" and "remote". Then they might look up "election".

we will fight

The draughty old fen has been given notice confirming what we had feared: our Post Office has been marked down for possible closure.

We're a big old fen, which could work against us - it appears that post-offices, when they are the only shop in the village, will be looked upon favourably; but if there are other shops then it's more likely that the post office will close, because the community will have remaining amenities. It works on paper, but personally I've never tried to post a letter in the greengrocer's.

We will, of course fight, and the ammunition of choice in this sort of a fight is information. That's where we meet the first hurdle - rural postmasters and postmistresses have been forced to sign "confidentiality agreements" which are nothing less than gagging orders.

These agreements state that should postmasters give information to people who wish to campaign against the threatened closure of these valuable amenities, they stand to lose their compensation payments - the equivalent of redundancy payments - should their post-offices be closed. A Sub Post Office operates like a private business, with the postmaster earning a commission on transactions as opposed to a wage, which gives a sinister edge to the constant peeling of functions from the Post Office. This compensation will be vital to many postmasters for whom their post office represented not only their source of income, but came with a tied house. Others, approaching retirement, will be depending on compensation, should their branch be closed, to augment their pension.

So we have to forage for our information like sounders of boar seeking berries. The British public seems to be on a starvation-diet as regards facts right now, but, thankfully, journalists are by nature hungry creatures. Mike Laycock of The York Press reports that even as the consultation process is ongoing, based on how much profit the Post Office is making, the pensions contract - worth £200 million - is being put up for tender. What is disturbing is that pensioners are contacted by call-centres and informed that their pensions are going to be paid into their bank-accounts, only being given the choice to collect them at the post-office if they push for it. Those who have newly reached pensionable age are given no choice, full stop.

It's been reported that the Post Office is losing £500,000 a day - perhaps this is not unrelated to the services that have been removed from it completely, or also made available over the internet, like Road Tax and TV Licenses. This even though the Government's own consultation document on "The Future of the rural Post Office Network" states "not only [do] many people not have a computer at home, but that broadband access [is] not available in many rural areas."

A 1988 report found that around 190 different types of transactions were (then) carried out over the post-office counter. These have, as we've seen, been greatly eroded, but in 2001, it was announced that the Post Office would no longer hold the monopoly of delivering mail.

There are rumoured to be five firms who want to compete with the Post Office to deliver mail. I am sure the PO will fight for its right to deliver as much mail as possible and, as I've observed, the ammunition of choice in this sort of a fight is information. In fighting to keep our post-offices open, we are supplying the Post Office with precise and valuable information on the demographics and needs in each community without demanding consultants' fees, even though we know our communities more intimately than anybody coming in from outside (like the operatives who will archive individuals' protests during the consultation period should a Post Office be earmarked for closure).

We will fight. Will we win? That depends on what constitutes winning. But our struggles will be recorded and not forgotten, and neither will the personalities who are administrating and finessing what increasingly seems to be a constellation of done deals.

In the meantime, please use your local post office. You can do more there than you may think, because you haven't been made aware of the breadth of services that it still provides. And write: to local newspapers, nationals, your Parish Councillors, District or City Councillors, MP's and MEP's. You know where to post the letters.

we need post-offices

An air of apprehension lies over the draughty old fen like a fog in a horror-film as we wonder about the future of our Post Office.

The post office is a local hub, where people meet and chat. It has, true, been less and less frequented in recent years, as people claiming certain benefits (pension, child benefit, widowed mother's allowance etc), have them paid into their bank accounts. It's not that they choose to do thus - new claimants aren't presented with a choice.

My friend Barbacana wasn't presented with a choice. He was told he would have to have his pension delivered into his bank account.

"What bank account?" he asked.

"The bank account we're going to pay your pension into," the functionary answered.

"But I don't have a bank account."

"Then you'll have to get one."

"But why would I want a bank account?"

Barbacana could hear desperation starting to set in. "So we can pay your pension into it."

"But I collect my pension at the post office."

"We recommend that you have it paid into your bank account."

"What bank account?"

"The one you're going to open so we can pay your pension into it."

"I don't want to open a bank account. I enjoy going to the post office and chatting to the other customers and the staff."

After a strangulated pause and several more sessions of going through the above dialogue, which Barbacana thoroughly enjoyed, it was decided that he would be sent a cheque for his pension, and he took great joy in informing his much-reduced interlocutor that he would cash it at the post office. He didn't tell the poor boy that he'd then put the money into his bank account. Lesson for civil servants: when dealing with people twice your age, resistance is not only futile, it leads to humiliation, ulcers and piles. Bully them at your peril.

The original plan was to close 5000 post-offices, on top of previous closures, but resistance was massive. So now 2500 closures are planned - but these are only the rural ones, the total cull could be much larger.

Of the planned closures to rural post offices, the size of the village and the frequency with which the post office is used will not necessarily be criteria. What the government wants is for 95% of people in rural areas to be within 3 miles of a post office (and 95% of people in "remote" areas to be within 6 miles of one). These criteria can, however, be met by a "mobile" post-office service (a post-office in a van, like a mobile library). I have to wonder, if you can only access a post office within three miles (or six, if you're remote) by being in the right place at the right time once or twice a week, how far away will the next nearest post office be if the mobile times clash with your district nurse coming, or you can't make it out of the house at the required time because removal of another local facility has left you feeling even more lonely and/or depressed than you were in the first place?

There's been a lot of business taken from the Post Office - TV licences, for one thing; alternative outlets for car-tax and premium bonds, etc. Yet the government report refers to the possibility that "some might guiltily embrace the increased convenience of on-line services" - it's there, on p11 of the .pdf file linked to above.

Is this about cost? In one sense yes: during parliamentary questions in May 2007, Alistair Darling, shortly before becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, was unable to deny Nigel Evan's assertion that the Post Office was losing £4m per week. But in the light of the cost of the war in Iraq to Britain, according to the New Statesman (so it must be true) hitting £5 billion, surely this could be covered?

In steps the European Union. According to Article 87(1) of the European Commission treaty on competition:

"Save as otherwise provided in this Treaty, any aid granted by a Member State or through State resources in any form whatsoever which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain undertakings or the production of certain goods shall, insofar as it affects trade between Member States, be incompatible with the common market."

In other words, the British Government is banned from providing financial aid to the Post Office by the EU on the grounds that the aid might be successful - and in the present context success means keeping rural community facilities open. I would have absolutely no objection to Article 87(1) if I thought there was the remotest possibility of FedEx taking over the running of the post office in the draughty old fen, or Parcelforce running the one in the sunny old fen ten miles down the road, or even Interflora providing a service in the muddy old fen, where if houses are two miles apart the occupants qualify as next-door-neighbours.

But I don't see this happening. I hope voters of all parties remember society's duty to those who aren't able to get around as well as the rest of us, and the damage to villages that subtraction of a post office could cause. And if the Government forces through this scheme, I hope voters of all parties remember that as well.