Post Office Closures and the Liberal Democrats
Those of us who are concerned about the closure of many of our rural post offices are astonished to find our local Lib Dems actively supporting the protests. Given that they are the most pro-EU party of all, they must surely be aware that it is EU Directives 97/67/EC and 2002/39/EC that are to blame.
This is how it used to work. We had an excellent system in place where you paid the same to have a letter delivered to the Scottish Islands as you did to have it delivered to an address three streets away. This meant that the expensive delivery services were subsidised by the more cost-effective ones, especially business post in the large cities. The post offices themselves could also be subsidised so that rural areas were not disadvantaged.
And what happens now? Well, the EU decided to open up postal services to competition and reduce the subsidies national governments were allowed to provide. The result, of course, is that the rural services are being hardest hit and the local post offices, providing a variety of really important services for local people, are having to close because they are not financially viable.
So if your local Lib Dems try to join protests in your area, ask them if they are aware of EU Directives 97/67 and 2002/39. Do they realise they are part of the problem? Do they realise they could have helped give us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty before we have to suffer any more of these ill-thought out European initiatives? If they do, how have they got the nerve to be protesting against the closures they helped to cause? If they don’t know, should they really be in a position of authority over us? And will you be voting for them in future elections?
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