Closure won't get my stamp of approval..

Byline: Joan Burnie

ONCE upon other times we used to have services. You know daft things that were run not for profit but to benefit the wider community.

They didn't have some high-faluting chief executive earning a hundred times more than his average employee managing them. Nor did they squeeze every last penny out of the business by cutting and shutting everyone and everything that didn't turn a super fast buck.

The blessed bottom line wasn't necessarily the only thing that mattered.

I know, I know, it's ridiculous as well as stupid that we tolerated such an antediluvian way of running things.

Gosh, we were so backward that we even had railways that didn't close down for days and even weeks at a time, while charging fares that require taking out a small mortgage.

Government departments didn't bung sensitive data to the US and beyond to be processed.

And you'll never believe this - if your phone was faulty you didn't, goodness gracious me, have to get it fixed via Mumbai.

Then there were Post Offices.

They were far more than just the place where you bought your stamps, picked up your pension, paid your TV licence and taxed the car.

They were in their own idiosyncratic and informal way a community centre. And that community didn't need to be half way up some isolated Highland glen but slap bang in the middle of our bigger cities as well.

It added to people's sense of belonging, not to some wretched postcode but to a place, their place, whether that was in the depths of rural Argyll or within a large urban area.

It was where people met each other and passed the time of day.

The post mistresses and masters knew their regulars and, if some elderly lady or gent failed to pick up their allowance, they would either drop-by themselves or get a neighbour to call in.

In short, like "Cheers!" it was where everyone knew your name.

Of course, there are some that still operate in much the same way as they always did, although if the latest rationalisation plans - management speak for closing the counters and making those who run them redundant - there will be few if any left.

All that will remain will be the large anonymous branches with their disembodied digital voices ordering you to "Till No. 3". And where they're more interested in selling you life insurance than telling you how much it costs to post a letter to your auntie in Oz.

And yet, and yet, I'm also aware, even as I write this, that I'm wearing my best and rosiest-tinted spectacles.

Hypocritical as well because yes, it WAS infuriating when it was a monopoly and the only place where stamps could be bought. I admit, too, that having the pension electronically popped into your bank account every four weeks will, for many, be infinitely easier than queuing up in the rain clutching a sodden book.

Logging on to the DVLA when it's time to tax the car is now a doddle. All done in a moment. New disc posted to your door. Simple.

But what about those - and there are some - who don't have a computer?

What about the OAPs who liked to amble down the road for their money and maybe amoan with their chums and who prefer the feel of hard cash in their hands?

For them pension day was a weekly social occasion, perhaps their only social occasion.

What happens to them?

Those in charge airily assure us that no one will ever be that far from a branch.

But if you've two sticks, sore hips or a dicky heart, even a 15-minute walk is a marathon.

Out in the boondocks, the post offices are often a lifeline, sometimes the only facility for miles. Where do those who still need them go? They don't all drive a 4 X 4.

The rural POs also provide, however, meagre, a living where unemployment is usually high.

So hypocritical or not, there must surely be a case for continuing to subsidise those branches, in the countryside as well as the towns, which don't make a profit or rather a sufficiently large profit? Fat chance.

Not when we are governed by those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Truly, there is so such thing as society any more.

'Out in the boondocks, the post offices are often alifeline, sometimes the only facility for miles. Where do those who still need them go? They don't all drive a 4x4'