This is Money Blog

Post Office: It's a mug's game!

Another fantastic idea from the Post Office - a free mug. 

Flushed with success after its previous great venture of decimating the network upon which it survives, the mighty behemoth appears to be branching into tableware. The mug in question is available at my local post office with a folksy little logo on the side 'Aah, that's better'. 

I am assuming this is something to do with that patronising fat guy in all those adverts pumped out by the Post Office propaganda machine - perhaps it is what he says when the cameras stop rolling on that phoney subpostmaster act.

There was a line of these fine pieces of mug crockery sitting atop the desks of the staff at my local east London branch in South Woodford. Customers have plenty of time to study as the next closest post office was shut down last year. Gone are the days of 'popping into a post office' - now we join a couple of dozen other hapless victims queuing for half. Plenty of time to admire these carefully crafted cups. 

The queue was running even further out of the door than usual as a space has been made at one end of the branch for a pretend banking booth. Three empty chairs - no sales assistant and certainly no bright and cheerful mugs - sorry, I mean customers. 

Eventually my turn arrived. This is Friday morning and that Mother's Day gift clutched in my sweaty hands will arrive just one day late by Monday if I'm willing to pay extra for recorded delivery. But what about First Class - won't that arrive next day? The assistant offers a smile. 

The mugs. Are they selling like hot cakes? ''They're not for sale - they're for customers who take out savings or other products from our banking desk. But I'm afraid there's no one in today - their day off.' And the mugs? 'So far we haven't managed to give any away.'

Toby Walne 

toby@walne.co.uk

Fly the flag for Post Office Bank

Flying the Union Jack upside down. A schoolboy error that is easy to make but for those who move in high-level diplomatic circles one that deserves a sharp wrap on the knuckles - with a proper ruler, not Gordon Brown.

Peter Mandelson was recently caught flying the flag topsy-turvy at one of those rather pointless charm offensive trade signings with China at Downing Street. Although not a treasonable offence it is a shabby gaffe and is fairly high up in the rules list in the painting-by-numbers Foreign Office guidebook. A true red-white-and-blue patriot should ensure the thicker white diagonals on the side nearest to the flagpole should be above the red lines and not sitting below.

But perhaps this was not a mistake after all but a typical piece of cunning from the Trade Secretary. After all, Mandy has spent hours staring at such flags in self-serving Eurocrat meetings in Brussels over the years, so surely knows what a Union Jack looks like. Patriotism is a sentiment he has most recently been abusing to good effect with proposals for a People's Bank at the Post Office. The stirring idea has been accompanied by claims it will enable British consumers to borrow more freely to beat the global credit crunch - a habit that caused it in the first place.

There are even suggestions that we pick up the nationalised wreckage of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley and bolt them together as a financial Frankenstein. Rebranded, the People's Bank could end up the National Bank of Britain.

By pure chance Mandy's bank suggestion - made from those outside the Government for many years - comes as he tries to flog the Post Office to foreigners. The audacious move will hopefully win over Labour MPs who are concerned about a 30 per cent stake in Royal Mail being sold to Dutch outfit TNT. Before we get too excited about a bank idea that can only help the plight of an already savaged post office network, let's wait for words to turn into action.

The latest sound-bite gambit by the Government shows confusion rather than clarity about what to do with the network and Mandy is calling for outside help. Flying the Union Jack upside down, as every good vexilloligist - flag expert - will tell you, is actually a coded distress signal used by the British forces to show they are in trouble.

Toby Walne

Cliff Richard and a Post Office song for Europe

'United Kingdom... nil point.' Cliff Richard has carried a great burden these past four decades. No, not the music or closet-challenging secrets of what really went on off the tennis courts with Sue Barker. No, the Botoxed Peter Pan of Pop still feels the pain of having the Eurovision song contest crown stolen from him.

Cliff sang his heart out with Congratulations in a performance that should have won him first place in 1968 - not the second received. But European politics goose-stepped in and ruined the party when Spanish El Generalissimo Francisco Franco rigged the vote. He bribed other countries to ensure the winner was Spanish singer Massiel with a typical Eurovision humdinger entitled 'La La La.'

Of course, just like a couple of world wars, this is all in the past. Yet tell that to Terry Wogan. He has been hosting the Eurovision cringe fest since the Seventies but this year decided to pass the baton on to some other poor soul. Apparently, our Tel has had enough of Russia playing musical iron curtains and bullying others into joining a former USSR voting cartel.

The Post Office competition may not be such a glittering sequinned affair but is also now open to international votes. Tearing up its manifesto pledge to keep the Post Office in public hands, Labour serpent of spin - and now also Business Secretary - Peter Mandelson is putting a huge chunk up for sale.

The reason he gives is a deficiency in 'the gene pool of British management'. Thanks. No mention that a sell off could enable the Government to mount a £22 billion raid on the company's pension fund and that the assets could be used to make its obscene levels of public borrowing looking smaller.

Favourite at the moment to buy into the Royal Mail and Post Office group is Dutch outfit TNT and it has been suggested it might take a 30 per cent stake in the great British institution. German outfit Deutsche Post is also in the frame.

Is it really a smart idea to sell off a chunk of our infrastructure to a foreign company? A lesson on international affairs is in order. This year Gordon Brown should host the Eurovision song contest - and Mandy should sing for Britain.

Toby Walne

toby@walne.co.uk

Full post office campaign

Playing footy with the Post Office

Travels with Toby: Financial Mail's Toby Walne on his visits to post offices under threat

Quokka soccer is a rare and illegal game involving small and cuddly marsupials that curl up into furry balls when they get kicked around by tourists. The pursuit was born on the seven-mile long island of Rottnest just 12 miles west of Fremantle in Western Australia. Apparently, the appeal is to kick one of these 10,000 or so cute joeys around the park until they are seriously injured or dead.

It is almost unanimously condemned as a sick and ghastly pursuit. And the local Australian authorities police the island in search of offenders and slap them with huge fines if caught in the criminal act.

There is nothing quite so sadistic going on with the similar population of threatened post offices in the larger animal-loving island of Britain. These branches are threatened by a quite different deadly sport - political football.

Lord Mandy of Hartlepool has taken charge of the Post Office debacle as part of the ministerial deal that returned him to Government in the hope he can make an unelected Prime Minister electable.

The dark lord has been working overtime in recent weeks. Someone had been drip-feeding post office scare stories of 3,000 more branch losses on top of the 2,500 already getting the chop should the network lose the Post Office Card Account. The POCA is used by four million customers who pick up benefits and pensions at their local post office branch every week.

It has now been announced that the Government is to step in and ensure the Post Office does not lose this tender. Furthermore, there are boasts it will look to widen the role of post offices to ensure their future survival.

But before joining in the celebrations, it is worth remembering this decision comes from the very same Government that pushed through the whole Post Office Card Account tender idea in the first place - claiming it had been forced to put it up for grabs due to Byzantine European Union legislation

We are all been played for fools by this expensive charade - one that is paid for by the taxpayer with cash that could have been used to help the network.

And no amount of clever use of smoke and mirrors can take away the fact that 2,500 post offices have been forced out of business in the last 18 months by meddling bureaucrats. It is no coincidence the U-turn on post office closures should only take place once it is too late and these branches have shut forever.

- Toby Walne, Financial Mail on Sunday
toby@walne.co.uk

>> Financial Mail's full campaign to save UK post offices

Aliens ate my post office

The first Apollo moon landing was nothing but a hoax. NASA faked the whole thing and the first step for mankind was actually made in the Nevada Desert. Don't believe me? So explain that fluttering flag caught on camera on the airless moon.

And that's not all. Lady Diana Spencer was indeed bumped off by the Royal family to stop her spilling the beans and John F Kennedy was shot by Castro to halt an invasion. One more. Elvis Presley is alive and not too well. He ekes out a living as an Elvis impersonator at a care home in Texas.

Propaganda is a powerful tool. Those of us who don't care to be hoodwinked go in search of our own truths - and often find it far more bizarre. It provides the fuel for conspiracy theorists that believe powerful 'establishment' forces pull the strings behind our back. These theories may be a bit far fetched - though nothing should be dismissed without question in a world where George W Bush is at the helm.

And now to a new conspiracy theory. Essex County Council has found a fresh way to spend our council tax by ploughing it into post offices. Yes, the very same branches already subsidised by the taxpayer through the Government's grasping hands.

There are other far more wasteful ways of spending our cash than propping up an ailing post office network - the billions being frittered away on self-serving bureaucrats and 'public servant' middle management, for example. So this news brave initiative should be applauded as a possible saviour.

But what I don't understand is what on earth is the Post Office playing at by using the European Union as a possible stumbling block.

I occasionally receive pro-British literature from concerned individuals or political groups such as UKIP, sharing concerns. Sensing xenophobia was partly to blame I was unconvinced by their argument and felt the problem lay more at our own doorstep.

But it now transpires a major 'problem' put forward by the Post Office that almost derailed the Essex council initiative was it contravened European Union rules on competition - subsidies deemed as being anti-competitive. To get around the obstacle the council must install a 'Community Information Point' in branches.

What absolute nonsense to constrain a public service helping another public service that is Government run, as it is in other countries. European Union rules are being used to directly effect whether a post office lives or dies. So who is pulling the strings?

Toby Walne

toby@walne.co.uk

Save our post offices from death by spin

Nothing is ever our fault. If we are fat and lazy then we can blame it on a slow metabolism and modern lifestyle while if the news is rather gloomy then the media should take the wrap. And so it goes with the slow and agonising death of our once proud post office network.

In this instance it is our old friend Gordon Brown who must ultimately take a pounding as the man in charge of the Government. That is what happens if you dare to ask the Post Office about who is ultimately behind the mindless closure 0f 2,500 of our 14,300 branches - many of which actually make a profit for the network.

In the latest round of spin from Whitehall focused on deflecting any responsibility the National Audit Office - a Government-backed watchdog - has announced it is to waste a lot of taxpayers' money by looking at the impact to communities of the closures.

It will focus attention on those travelling vans that will park in vulnerable villages for a few hours a week offering a post office 'outreach service' instead of a proper branch. The investigation is to look at the role played by the Department of Trade and Industry on how it trumped up the criteria for closures.

The DTI initially tried to evade responsibility by re-branding itself as the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform but the National Audit Office appears to already have unmasked this non-too-clever disguise.

Of course, by the time the undoubtedly worthy and weighty tome is produced and put before Parliament next year the affected branches will have long since closed down. To those of us who prefer real action rather than windbag words this makes any criticism a huge waste of time - and it is too late to say sorry.

But then who is to blame for such incompetence? Blaming Gordon Brown is well and good but it fails to stop the rot of all these senseless closures. All we can do is try to relieve the weight of blame from our own shoulders by using the local post office as much as we can and fight tooth and nail for its survival.

Gulliver's travels to the post office

There is a curious breed of people known as the Struldbrug. They look just like you and I except for a curious red dot birthmark above the left eyebrow.

They live, according to author Jonathan Swift who recalls them in his book Gulliver's Travels, on an island off Japan. But what really marks them out from the rest of us is they are immortal and can never die.

I was reminded of these humans on a recent visit to Watford as part of the Save Our Post Office campaign. There I had the good fortune to meet a widow named Winifred Reeves, who is 76. She pulled no punches - 'You are old so you do not matter - that is the message from the Post Office.'

Winifred has a fair point. The MPs and Post Office bosses who get driven around in big fancy cars have no need to visit post offices to pay bills or collect benefits, such as the state pension. It is the elderly who suffer most from their closures as they rely more than any other section of society on a local branch. Closing down a post office is two fingers up to a pensioner but no trouble at all to those not affected.

So back to the Struldbrugs. Apparently, when this race reaches 30 years of age they start to feel depressed. Strange? You might think immortality is a healthy way of life worth celebrating. Sadly, it appears not - something is preying on their mind. Upon reaching the age of 80 they become legally dead.

Added to this ignominy they suffer from the usual afflictions of age, slowly falling apart at the seams but never actually being allowed to die. All their estate is passed on to heirs once the Struldbrugs reach 80 and they live a wretched existence on the periphery of life.

Sound familiar? Poor old Winifred has just four more years to go until the Struldbrug are cut off and ignored. The Post Office is well ahead of the game.

Toby Walne
toby@walne.co.uk

Last orders at the post office

Raise a glass to the good people of Greenodd in the spectacular scenery of the Lake District in Cumbria. Facing the closure of their much-loved post office the villagers have called on the local Ulverston Brewing Company to concoct a battling beer to publicise their plight and keep the branch alive.

Bridie's Brew is named after the 12-year-old golden retriever who spends most of the day lying on a stone slab by the post office door. Bridie is owned by the subpostmistress Janet Willis, 46, and her husband Lloyd, 50, who also looks after the attached shop.

Bridie is welcomed with a big hug and pat by many of the visitors - a poignant symbol of just what the post office means to this idyllic rural retreat. Her brew may not knock socks off with an alcoholic content of 3.9 per cent but still has a highly intoxicating appeal.

Gifted a bottle on a recent visit for Our Post Office campaign I can attest to its an refreshing appeal. I am not alone. The first batch of eight barrels distributed to local pubs were sold out by lunchtime on the first day and bottles of 'Save Greenodd Post Office' branded brew are now as rare as a Chateau Lafite.

But the aftertaste having finished this classic beer is not so pleasant. Despite having a seemingly water-tight reason to stay open - the usual list such as essential role within the community, seeming to turn over a decent profit and being miles away from other branches - the Post Office top brass are unmoved.

A good honest pint of bitter is obviously not to their taste and doesn't fit in with their champagne parties prefered by the overpaid bureaucrats in London. The hangover of letting this post office branch close is far more long-term than just a next morning headache.

It spells permanent destruction to a vital part of community life.

Toby Walne
toby@walne.co.uk

Essex white knight may not save our post office

Essex County Council has pledged £1.5 million of council tax over the next three years to reopen 15 of the 31 branches axed across the county. It has struck a chord with 50 other local authorities that have since got in touch with the Essex white knight to see how they might jump on the bandwagon.

Councils should be applauded for supporting their local community services but there is something rather unappealing about yet another layer of bureaucracy cluttering up an already messy act. The very reason why post offices up and down Britain are in such as awful state is the meddling from public sector pen-pushers who have no idea how to run a private enterprise, but prefer instead to hide behind an office desk.

Ask your friends at the council to do something for you and, if they listen, you might spark off a series of pointless meetings, the cost of an outside consultancy and lots of defensive spin before there is any hope of anything getting done - it all just adds to the bill.

Another problem is that the council money being playing with is all part of the very same pot that is skimmed off us in a variety of tax ways - some of which is specifically earmarked for the Post Office clunking fist.

The well-meaning local authorities are expected to offer rescue packages of £18,000 a branch over three years from council tax receipts. But this money could be spent on other vital amenities - and what happens once our hard earned cash has been spent? The short-term sound bites are appealing but without a change in the post office infrastructure the problems forcing closures will still remain.

The best bet is for the hapless Prime Minister Gordon Brown to add post offices on to his increasingly long shopping list of U-turns and do the decent thing - finally call a halt to the closure madness and let branches run themselves.

Toby Walne

toby@walne.co.uk

Think of a number... add it to Post Office closures

Think of a number... any number. Double it, add a few hundred and multiply some more. No need for subtraction or division - the amount only ever goes up. This is the crude maths formula used by the Government for closing post offices.

Not long ago there were more than 18,500 across Britain. This was the turn of the Century when the Save Our Post Office campaign first kicked off.

We launched the campaign because, against the wishes of just about every customer, the Post Office was axing the benefits book and forcing recipients to have cash paid directly into a bank account instead.

Those that were not intimidated by the bullies elected to have a Post Office Card Account - a substitute that cost an eye-watering £1 billion to install.

Post office branches began to drop like flies as the most vulnerable felt the squeeze trying to survive. If the Government is to be believed this was little more than a coincidence.

Then the overpaid spin doctors moved in. They coined a pernicious phrase - 'network reinvention programme'. This Stalinist doctrine closed a further 3,000 branches. The only silver lining was it was the last time anyone would suffer. Once the wheat was sorted from the chaff no more branches would be forced out of business.

But of course, a couple of years later it was time for yet another 'reinvention'. This time 2,500 more post offices had to go – but still no word of closure as this time it was 'network change.' Even those branches that were making a healthy profit would be targeted in the latest culling.

And what now, as the grim reaper scythes his way through the beleaguered survivors - surely no more can face the axe? After all, almost half the number of post offices in existence when Labour came to power in 1997 have now been closed down.

Then we learn that the Post Office Card Account is up for grabs. Among those bidding for the business is PayPoint, which recently won the lucrative chance to sell TV Licenses. According to the Federation of SubPostmasters 3,000 branches will close down in 2010 if the Post Office loses the card account.

As the misery continues so must the fight to Save Our Post Offices

May 19, 2008 in Author: Toby Walne | Permalink | Comments (0)