[garinda]

Received via pm, from Cyfr.

Sorry for quoting your message here, but I'm not carrying on the debate here and also by pm.

[Quote Cyfr/]Thatcher privatised industries that were still going to exist after privatisation, only with lower costs to the customer because of competition.

The post office isn't like that though is it, it's important to many people, perhaps most important in more rural areas.

I'm not advocating running the network at huge dramatic lost to the tax payer, but it seems sensible to at least give the sub-post offices a chance to compete. I do think we should be subsidising the rurals, because they don't have alternatives in the same way we do. The post office network was still profitable under the Tories. Labour took various aspects away from them (such as the whole pensions by DD), which is good, but they didn't look at it from a business point of view and say "Well if we're taking that away, maybe we should let them compete in other areas".

If at the end of the day we can't turn them around into profits (the urban ones), then fair enough we should look at closure, but it almost seems like they've not even looked at the other options before deciding to close them.

Another notable point is that when post offices close, surrounding businesses tend to suffer too, theres a study about it but I can't find it as it was just referenced in the debate. So the economic impact is more than just getting our money back from the post office, as we will lose tax elsewhere.[quote/]

Dramatic loss?

Four million pounds per week, to me is a dramatic loss, especially as the figure is constantly rising, and will continure to do so, as more and more people chose to shop for their services eleswhere.