Is this Postal Strike Just an Excuse for a 3-Day Piss Up?

The reason I'm asking is because yesterday I passed the picket line at Sighthill depot and saw this on the right.

Today exactly 24 hours later I didn't see swarms of disgruntled postal workers looking for justice, fighting for their jobs, indeed I didn't even see one. No what I did see was this below.



Yeah an empty gazebo, a still warm oil drum the remains of their fire pictured in the main picture. But loads of empty beer and cider cans strewn across the whole area, not just at the entrance to the Royal Mail depot. Also startlingly there was not a sign of a single worker manning the picket line at the start of day 2.

Seeing as this is also the vehicle maintenance location for Edinburgh I suspect that even if the strike had of come to an end none of the workers would have been legally allowed to drive any of the vehicles anyway.

Therefore the question is rightly put, is this strike just an excuse for a 3-day piss up. Because I'm guessing there may be a few with hangovers this morning.

Michael Connarty Won't Walk the Walk on Post Offices

Michael Connarty has been all over the local press in West Lothian and Falkirk recently about his desire to save local Post Offices and the services they provide.

Well that week there was a chance for him to suspend the closures he has been so adamaent about over recent months, when a Conservative motion was put before the House of Commons caling for a suspension of closures.

Did he walk the walk to back up all his talk?

Well no actually. In this week's Falkirk Herald he attempts to give his reasons.

"My problem was I didn't support any of the motions: the Conservatives want to break up the Post Office through selling it off, while the LibDems want mutualisation. However, I couldn't support the Government either and that's why I abstained. It was a difficult situation."

No forgive me if I'm wrong but as secretary of the communication workers' parliamentary liaison group he is bound to be privy to enough information to formulate his own alternative motion if the alternatives weren't good enough for him. As an elected Member of Parliament he would have been perfectly entitled to put forward his own ammendments to that effect. So why didn't he?

The answer is plain and can be summer up by his new slogan.

Michael Connarty cares about you local Post Offices just not enough to do anything about it except talk.

Clealy the Liberal Democrats are the only party that will genuinely save the local post offices of Linlithgow and Falkirk East.

Update: The story is now also available in the Linlithgow Gazette.

The Very Model of a Modern Post Master General

I always marvel at the relevance of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the latest Making Money is about Moist van Lipwig who we first met in Going Postal when Lord Vetinari appointed him the new Post Master General for Ankh Morpork. He has now been given control of the biggest bank and mint in the city because he has turned around the post office making it reliable, efficient and profitable. As the title suggests he has now been charged with making money.

It appears that possibly Terry in his infinite wisdom has taken a look at the current Labour government's policy on Post Offices and twisted it towards this logical conclusion. Yesterday when I returned home after writing about the closure of Post Offices coming to parts of Scotland I turned on the news to be bombarded my 'loyal' Labour Glasgow MPs being up in arms about the reduction of access to their constituents of much needed services, especially the elderly and those without access to private transport.

But what have they stood on at the last three elections as far as Post Offices are concerned. (Parenthesises mine)

In 1997 Labour promised in their manifesto:

'We will ensure that self-financing commercial organisations within the public sector - the Post Office is a prime example - are given greater commercial freedom to make the most of new opportunities.

'Life in our countryside

'Labour recognises the special needs of people who live and work in rural areas. The Conservatives do not. Public services and transport services in rural areas must not be allowed to deteriorate. The Conservatives have tried to privatise the Post Office. We opposed that, in favour of a public Post Office providing a comprehensive service. Conservative plans would mean higher charges for letters and put rural post offices under threat.'

In 2001:

'The Post Office and postal services

'We are committed to high-quality, universal postal services, and a dynamic Post Office which can thrive in a world of technological change and increased competitive pressure. Labour is working with the banks to offer a new universal banking service. This will allow all benefit and pension recipients to receive their payments, at no charge, in full at the post office after the switch to Automated Credit Transfer in 2003.

'We also intend the local post office to become an invaluable resource for access to government information. There will be increased incentives for people to take over and modernise post offices. Business customers, representing by far the majority of the Post Office’s turnover, want a full range of express, parcels and logistics services. We have given the Post Office greater commercial freedom in the public sector. It needs to be able to gain an advantage in the new postal market and become a leading force in domestic and international postal services through alliances and joint ventures. We want to help the Post Office keep up with the best in a fast-changing market.

'Rural life

'Labour is pledged to a rural services standard to set out specifically what rural people can expect from 21 public service providers - with annual auditing and commitments to service improvement. The rural school closure programme has been ended; 3,000 new, affordable homes a year are on the way; a £30 million police programme will help cut rural crime; £239 million over three years has been set aside for rural transport services; and the Post Office is now obliged to prevent closure of rural post offices except in unavoidable circumstances, with £270 million to help achieve this and recruit sub-postmasters.'

And in 2005:

'Thriving rural areas

'Since 1997, Labour has made it more difficult to close rural schools, put in £750 million to support rural post offices and introduced a 50 per cent rate relief on village shops.Through our £51 million Rural Bus Subsidy Grant we have delivered over 2,200 new bus services in rural areas this year.'

Whoops!

Not only has Labour been saying less an less about Post Offices over the last 10 years they have also clearly not been delivering on their own promises. Promises about how important the post offices should be, how everyone should still be able to get their benifits in full from their 'local' post office and that the Post Office will become a leading force in industry to take but three.

The First Cut is the Deepest

Sadly it appears that the pound speaks more highly than the need as far as the Post Office is concerned.

The announcement of the first Post Office closures in Scotland are being announced today. The Post Office Ltd is announcing these in phases and the first trance of these for Glasgow, central Scotland and Argyll are a lot deeper than expected according to the Scotsman.

24 of the 44 offices earmarked for closure are in Glasgow, while rural areas in the Cental Belt and West have come out least scathed. What is apparent is that the cuts appear to have been based on the type of business each office carries out rather than the reliance on such business the local communities may require of their post office. Therefore most of the cuts appear to have come in the poorer areas.

Last month the National Consumer Council issued a report which highlighted that found that people most reliant on post offices, such as the elderly and unemployed, were the least likely or able to lobby for them to stay open. These cuts announced for Scotland seems to bear out this that the Post Office is hurting still further those most reliant on their services but is favouring those who keep them most profitable.

There are now fears for the rest of Scotland including Lothian following this first look at what services will be cut.

Adam Crozier the Beeching of the Post Offices

Adam Crozier the Chief Executive of the Royal Mail has said:

That the current situation — where a thousand post offices have fewer than six customers a day — was “not sustainable”.

However, six per day comes to 36 a week which might actually be the whole population of some of the villages that are possibly under threat by mr Crozier's radical changes. Rural post offices are often also the only source of banking services in some rural communities so their universal provision is of vital importance to many people. He says these unprofitable post offices lose £2m a week, or £104m.

Of course all this talk of radically cutting post office services has also come the day after £1.7bn of Taxpayers money is being provided to bail out the Royal Mail's pension scheme.

Yet somehow dispite £1.3bn being injected for radical transformation of the Royal Mail Mr Crozier is talking of meeting his legal obligations with only 4000 of the current 14,500 post offices. But what about his moral obligations to provide customer satisfaction, not all of the 4000 offices he will be maintaining are going to be easily accessible especially by our most vulnerable citizens. This sounds like it might become as radical a cull of a vital service as that carried out by Dr. Richard Beeching on the railways in the 1960s.

We need the government to have a clear rethink on Post Office policy and provision and to lay down conditions on the way this £3bn of our money is actually being used. Surely this should be to improve the service not to further reduce it.

Connarty on Post Office Card Accounts

I was catching on my emails and discovered an interesting statement by Michael Connarty, MP for Linlithgow and Falkirk East, regarding the Government's plans to scrap Post Office card accounts.

In the House of Commons on Tuesday he called on David Cairns, Under Secretary of State for Scotland, to meet with colleagues at the Department of Trade and Industry to discuss withdrawing the proposal to scrap the scheme. He said that the proposals to scrap the scheme would 'save some money for the Department for Work and Pensions, but will cause deep offence and concern to the pensioners in our society.'

Strangely he has votely loyally with the Government over every post office proposal put forward including these interesting divisions from 15 May 2002 and the 24 May 2004 which appears to be contrary to what he is saying this week.