Post Office closures

[Harrison]

It's not quite as straight forward as it might first seem. The reason many things like the TV license cannot be purchased from the Post Office any longer is because the license to provide this service came up for renewal and they (the government) pulled the plug on it so the Post Office actually lost the contract to handle them. The same is true of the Passport checking service they used to do which I used last time I renewed mine and thought it was an excellent idea.

And the reason for the excess charges to pay bills over the counter now is a similar reason. The Post Office now has to pay a charge for accepting cash to pay bills, so they have to pass this charge on to the customer.

Don't blame the Post Office. Blame our crap government!

And the reason for the 2000+ Post Office closures that are due to take place isn't because of a drop in customers due to reduced use. That is just the media trying to hype something that is not true. The reason for the closures is because of the postal system being opened up to tender a couple of years ago and Royal Mail now making much less money because 75% of their total revenue is generated from business customers, not the general public posting stamped mail, and companies like TNT and businesspost have stolen a lot of Royal Mail's business customers. Therefore less revenue coming in means less money to run smaller branches of Post Office.

So again, blame our government for handing the mail system out to tender. Why they did it is stupid. Royal Mail is a government owned company so in effect they short themselves in the foot doing it. The argument is that putting it out to tender leads to competition driving down prices, but this is only true to business mail. The other companies are not interested in personal general public stamped mail because there is no money in it. Royal Mail have never made money from this mail. Their money has always been made from business mail with the money from stamped mail just contributing towards revenue. But now the business mail is dropping off and going to the opposition the stamped mail cannot pay all Post Offices to stay open.

So... BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!!!