Thanks for post office support but...
August 26, 2008 1:00 PM
I'M pleased that Tory candidate Mark Garnier wants to save the post offices that survived his party's 3,500 branch cuts in the 1990s.
As I stated in the Shuttle some months ago, the Liberal Democrats believe that most of the post offices facing closure could be made viable, so it's good to see Mark supporting the Lib Dem view.
However, his attack on EU law for saying that the Post Office Card Account should be put out to private tender is perplexing.
Isn't open market tendering a keystone of Thatcherism? Isn't it exactly what the Tories did to our healthcare, buses, airports, railways, water, electricity, gas, waste disposal and many of the services formerly available only at your local Post Office? Make up your mind, Mark!
Thankfully, his argument is less muddled than the rant by UKIP's West Midlands MEP, Mike Nattrass (Shuttle letters, August 7).
Mr Nattrass accuses Europe of limiting the British Government's ability to subsidise post offices to just £150 million. This is quite simply untrue.
The £150 million figure and the public service it is intended to pay for were both specified by the UK Government, not by the EU Commission.
If the Labour Government wanted even more post offices and a greater subsidy to maintain them, it could have done so.
The only role of the Commission is to check that the £150 million is a reasonable figure for the loss-making public services specified and not a hidden subsidy. This is just one of several EU measures to protect Britain's post offices that our government has ignored.
If Mr Nattrass really cared about the British citizens who elected him to vote for them in the EU Parliament, he might set aside his war on Europe for a minute and recognise that the Royal Mail and the British Labour government are the ones stifling our post offices' ability to diversify and thrive.
NEVILLE FARMER, Wyre Forest Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesman
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