Morning protest outside Highgate Post Office with Victoria Wood, Stanley Baxter and over 100 local and very angry residents. Organised by the Highgate Society, it was a truly magnificent turn out – and since then have seen Victoria doing a storming job on various TV stations fighting for what everyone wants – a local Post Office that is open to serve local people.

In the evening – rushed back from Parliament for huge public meetings on the Alexandra Park Road Post Office – where two officers of the Royal Mail had come to explain and answer. What an unenviable job – defending the indefensible.

The well over two hundred local attendees made it plain in no uncertain terms what they thought of the proposal to close the office and why it would cause such hardship in their own lives.

Earlier in the week, the threatened offices of Ferme Park Road and Weston Park local residents marched and then marched to the suggested alternative in Crouch End and queued outside – to demonstrate the ludicrously long queues that we will all have to suffer if the closures go ahead. And of course – I held my surgery in Salisbury Road Post Office (also on the list) with a huge turnout of local people that I wrote up at the time.

The Government should be ashamed of itself for presiding over the axing of so many Post Offices. They find endless money for Northern Rock and Iraq, and yet saving our local Post Offices is peanuts – and more to the point they could be made viable if they were allowed to sell the full range of products that is available to main Post Offices. So – if this isn’t a matter of taking a metaphor too far – it’s not only peanuts, it’s temporary peanuts – if there is the real will there to help our much loved and vital network of Post Offices survive.