After all the consultations, it has now announced the Weston Park, Ferme Park Road, Salisbury Road, Alexandra Park Road and Highgate Village Post Offices will all close. This is outrageous. The government promised it would listen after its drumming in the recent elections, but it is has proved itself completely deaf to the pleas from thousands of local residents and community activists. If Labour was listening, Labour would have stepped in and acted. The message from we the people was clear: we do not want these closures.
Tag Archives: royal mail
Why Sky is the Liberal Democrats of TV news
I had decided to ask Gordon Brown a question at PMQs today – on listening to the people and learning (post disastrous election results last week) and suggest that if he had the guts he could prove he was listening by dropping the Post Office closure program. (Bad news for us by the way – none of our Post Offices were saved. We will have to get the info on why only a meagre seven in London were saved using FOI and then make hell let loose.)
Anyway – sadly I had to go to a funeral of an old uncle who died yesterday – so missed PMQs. On the radio coming back from the cemetery to parliament, blow me, I heard David Cameron ask exactly my point. That is scary! (For Nick’s questions, see the write-up on Lib Dem Voice.)
Raced to Sky News lunch with Adam Boulton and crew who were lunching Lib Dems to discuss how their news could extend even further into plurality and impartiality through internet and so on. Gorgeous lunch – and always interesting to hear what the other side thinks. Adam seemed to think that Sky News was the Liberal Democrats of news programs – in as much as they are always having to punch above their weight against the terrestrials of BBC and ITN.
I do think – and so did most of us MPs present – that Sky has the best rolling news and breaking news. And although I didn’t see their election coverage (as the stupid row with Virgin robbed me) I gather it was excellent. So unlike the BBC TV coverage that everyone in blogland has been blasting to high heaven for its low grade and tatty approach.
Very enjoyable – and as Julia Goldsworthy pointed out – half Sky’s top ten fanciable MPs were present. So – we ain’t got the power – but we sure got the looks!
Only seven London Post Offices to be saved?
Word reaches me (though how reliable – not sure) that our cynical government, scared to announce the result of the consultation into Post Office closures in London prior to the elections, will announce this coming week that only seven Post Offices in London will not be closed. So – nearly all our campaigning and desperate pleas will have basically fallen on deaf ears if this is true.
Having watched both Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman today on the TV saying that they have learned lessons and are listening to the people – I would say if the Post Offices rumour proves to be true – then no, they aren’t listening. If they were really listening to the people they would stop this closure policy dead in its tracks. We’ll see!
Local news: play areas, 603 bus and Post Offices
Just been updating my website with news stories from the last week, and here are three highlights:
- Haringey misses out on play area funding: read the story here.
- Brian Paddick backs a full 603 bus route service: read the story here.
- Liberal Democrat councillors, led by Neil Williams, prod Haringey Council into Post Office action: read the story here.
Post Offices: Labour says one thing, does another
After PMQs yesterday, I rushed to Five Live to do Simon Mayo – and guess what – Post Offices were the issue of the day!
Loads of emails into the program expressing the rage and anger felt by local people everywhere. The Labour MP on the panel, Celia Barlow was really put on the spot by Mayo. The Opposition Day debate in the afternoon with a vote at 7pm was to put a moratorium on the proposed closures giving time for more creative solutions to be found.
Now Celia is in the position of many Labour MPs of having voted through the procedure last year which set off the new round of closures, but now is camaigining locally to save Post Offices in her constituency. So – when given a second chance to vote the right way on the issue, what was she going to do?
If enough Labour MPs voted for the motion, the consultation and the process would have to be halted. But Celia said she didn’t think she would go through the lobbies with the Tories. I know it’s not easy to defy the whip – but in this case – where you are saying something locally, you really should have the gumption to back it up with a vote in Parliament.
Some Labour MPs did – but if only another 10 or so Labour MPs had switched – we could have won the vote. Desperately close. And what makes me angry is that this is yet another case of Labour politicians saying one thing (“we care about saving Post Offices”) but then doing another (as is also the case locally – where far from helping Salisbury Road Post Office, Labour-run Haringey Council has hit it with a huge financial bill).
In the evening I played host to our Kurdish community at Parliament for the celebration of Newroz.
There is a large and now very active Kurdish community who face terrible discrimination in Turkey and other places.
Protesting with Victoria Wood
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.
Labour doubles rent of local Post Office – and backdates it
Well – what a slap in the face for everyone who is campaigning to save Salisbury Road Post Office.
Labour-run Haringey Council has decided to double its rent – and backdate that for three years. You’d almost think they were deliberately trying to drive it out of business – and it certainly makes a nonsense of their claims to be wanting to support local campaigners against Post Office closures!
Salisbury Road Post Office: what closure would really mean
What a phenomenal turn out by local Noel Park residents come to meet me at the Salisbury Road sub-post office – which is one of the ones Labour want to close.
Everyone is outraged, furious, upset. No one can understand this short-sighted proposal driven by Labour to axe it – and many other local Post Offices. They are part of the fabric of our lives – and we don’t want to have to go to one further away. In this case the suggested alternative is on an impossible to cross, never free of traffic junction. It is a quarter of the size of the Salisbury Road one and you can’t get wheelchairs properly through the door and to the counter. This one – by contrast – is easy access for wheelchairs (two at a time if need be), has plenty of meter parking for those who cannot walk and has lots of room in the shop.
I met many, many people here today. The older ladies were all up in arms. Olive wanted a soap box to tell the Government where they could stick it! But Mrs Howe, 75 in a wheelchair is incandescent at what this will do to her life and her ability to get out and about. Another lady who cannot walk very far – but who can get to this Post Office – told me that it would cost her £4.00 each way to the Post Office she would have to go to. Was Labour going to reimburse her? Not bloody likely. Another woman told me that she cares for her severely disabled husband who would have no chance of ever being able to get to a Post Office again.
These are people’s that the Labour government is playing god with. These are the human faces behind the story of “post office closures across Haringey“. And these are the very people the state should be helping, not hindering.
George Meehan – the Labour leader of Haringey Council – turned up to tell people that they objected to the closures too. Well it’s Labour who are closing our Post Offices. I asked George in front of the crowd whether he would look at what Essex County Council are doing and stepping in to save their threatened Post Offices. No he said: Haringey wouldn’t do that.
So everyone is going to write to the consultation and put their real life story on paper. Because that is the reality of what will happen if we don’t stop the closures. You can also sign the petition here.
The Post Office massacre
No surprise really – my latest column for one of the local magazines is about the campaign to save our local Post Offices:
Our local Post Offices are a much loved and vital part of our community. But Labour’s obsession with trying to squeeze out yet more financial savings (whilst wasting millions in other parts of government) would see another 2,500 Post Offices close across the country as they force the Royal Mail to follow their central targets.
For us locally it’s not just Alexandra Park that faces losing its Post Office – Highgate Village, Weston Park, Ferme Park Road and Salisbury Road are all also facing the same axe. Not all Post Offices face the axe mind – Labour is not wanting to chop any of the three Post Offices all located within the Palace of Westminster. So – no Post Office for Highgate, but three just for the Palace of Westminster!
You can read the rest of the article here, and sign the petition here.
On the campaign trail in Highgate
Out campaigning with our wonderful candidate Rachel Allison in the Highgate Ward by-election. We are clearly doing well judging from response on doorstep.
However, Rachel was really shocked by the wording in a Labour leaflet we found where they are claiming dirty tricks ‘cos one of their stakeboard posters had been vandalised – and they clearly infer it as Lib Dems. Outrageous – and simply lies. Indeed, we currently have about six of our stakeboards that have been vandalised – we assume (probably rightly) that it is kids or people coming out of the pub drunk simply vandalising our boards. Labour are clearly just trying to smear us. You really would think they could do better than that!
There are rather weightier issues on the minds of residents of course – such as the proposed Labour-driven closure of our wonderful Highgate Post Office, the future of Jacksons Lane (which we have saved for the time being after years of neglect by Labour threatened its crucial funding), the parking arrangements at the Highgate Group Practise, the extension of the 603, our continuing campaign to get people to move away from using plastic bags (rubbished in typical arrogant Haringey Labour fashion by one of their leading lights who thought that trying to cut waste and protect our environment is only a “fashion statement”!) and proper consultation on CPZs – as always!
These are the issues that local people want to hear about and want their local councillors to fight for. Go Rachel!
Lynne Featherstone 