The Town Continues To Suffer...
Save Our Town...the successful candidate asked the town's people to sign a petition during the election campaign to choose the area's new MP. The petition was to be handed into the very people who had been dealing with the redevelopment of the town for years and are being wound up, under new proposals across the whole of the UK and Wales, so why would a council that is being closed down want to be bothered with lots of extra work when they probably have to tie up lots of loose ends for when the new authority takes over?
After all all the present councillors will have to stand for election again and for all we know, fewer will be required and the wards they manage may become larger.
Social housing is being put up for possible sale again and will probably happen this time. Already the repair service has been moved into a kind of association that all but means a private company is handling them(and all council maintenence workers have been moved into the scheme)
It may be denied but the older part of the town still suffers with empty shop units and established businesses struggling with ever dwindling shoppers spending their money.
In a freesheet that was delivered at the weekend, there is a lead story about the closure of a Post Office branch in town or is under threat of closure and standing in a photo giving his full support to fight the closure is our MP. There may good business reason behind the closing of many post offices. It's happening all over the country. I know that many post offices do more than sell postage stamps and for many in the community they are a place where many other things can be done such as paying bills, buying services, some are combined stores so you can shop whilst there, in many cases they offer a social service especially to the elderly.
I'd miss my own branch if it closed. It would be difficult for me to travel, costly and time consuming.
Update:LBC(Commercial radio station based in London)is reporting 1 in 5 Post Offices could be closed(that's 175 branches)across the city and again, all the social reasons are being given for saving them but it's being said unless they are closed, the service will not be able to continue.
Unless I have misread the situation, the post office under it's business model is subsidised by the taxpayer. And the Government is it's paymaster. It is not a private business. So the Government is looking for ways to save money and some do not make money but are imporant socially.
So as the MP offering his support stands there in a T-shirt with a slogan written across it and saying he'll do what he can to keep this branch open...The party that is in power and putting these proposals through is the one he is member of.
And if this one is saved, another will not be as lucky. Decisions have probably all been made and agreed.
Now there may be a political biasness here and therefore it pays to look at the overal picture but at this time on the front page of the local Freesheet this was featured on the front page alongside the story about the Post Office. It tells of rises in costs to the population regarding various charges like the Community Charges. It also mentions the cost of some signs that have been errected and all because after years and years it has been decided to change the name of the Industrial Estate to Business Park and what they have cost.
And one of my taxi drivers was unhappy about this and was telling me what they look like. I haven't seen them myself. But at a time where our retail area has not been completed and the Councils around the UK are being wound down and money probably has to be spent or lost maybe other ideas could have been suggested for this to be spent on. Do I care if a place is called a Business Park or Industrial Estate...not really.
After all all the present councillors will have to stand for election again and for all we know, fewer will be required and the wards they manage may become larger.
Social housing is being put up for possible sale again and will probably happen this time. Already the repair service has been moved into a kind of association that all but means a private company is handling them(and all council maintenence workers have been moved into the scheme)
It may be denied but the older part of the town still suffers with empty shop units and established businesses struggling with ever dwindling shoppers spending their money.
In a freesheet that was delivered at the weekend, there is a lead story about the closure of a Post Office branch in town or is under threat of closure and standing in a photo giving his full support to fight the closure is our MP. There may good business reason behind the closing of many post offices. It's happening all over the country. I know that many post offices do more than sell postage stamps and for many in the community they are a place where many other things can be done such as paying bills, buying services, some are combined stores so you can shop whilst there, in many cases they offer a social service especially to the elderly.
I'd miss my own branch if it closed. It would be difficult for me to travel, costly and time consuming.
Update:LBC(Commercial radio station based in London)is reporting 1 in 5 Post Offices could be closed(that's 175 branches)across the city and again, all the social reasons are being given for saving them but it's being said unless they are closed, the service will not be able to continue.
Unless I have misread the situation, the post office under it's business model is subsidised by the taxpayer. And the Government is it's paymaster. It is not a private business. So the Government is looking for ways to save money and some do not make money but are imporant socially.
So as the MP offering his support stands there in a T-shirt with a slogan written across it and saying he'll do what he can to keep this branch open...The party that is in power and putting these proposals through is the one he is member of.
And if this one is saved, another will not be as lucky. Decisions have probably all been made and agreed.
Now there may be a political biasness here and therefore it pays to look at the overal picture but at this time on the front page of the local Freesheet this was featured on the front page alongside the story about the Post Office. It tells of rises in costs to the population regarding various charges like the Community Charges. It also mentions the cost of some signs that have been errected and all because after years and years it has been decided to change the name of the Industrial Estate to Business Park and what they have cost.
And one of my taxi drivers was unhappy about this and was telling me what they look like. I haven't seen them myself. But at a time where our retail area has not been completed and the Councils around the UK are being wound down and money probably has to be spent or lost maybe other ideas could have been suggested for this to be spent on. Do I care if a place is called a Business Park or Industrial Estate...not really.
posted by The Great Gildersleeve | 2:13 pm
4 Comments:
February and March are great if you are in charge of the works department at the council, that's when you get to spend what's left in the piggy bank before the financial year ends and the next years central govt.funding is decided. All of a sudden roads are mended, pavements repaired and the invisible white lines on the roads reappear.
I wrote a piece on local Post Offices about two years ago I think and the number closing has continued. Where I work the Post Office moved into Safeway about 10 years ago, when Morrison's bought out Safeway they said they didn't want a Post Office in the store and it had to be moved into the town's biggest newsagent. If you go out into the country some villages don't have any amenities at all, village life as our ancestors lived it doesn't exist at all anymore.
Long before all this talk of closing the Post Offices our main retail area of the town had it's own retail unit and then it was closed and moved to the other end and combined with a new newsagent/sweet shop.
The empty unit where it had been remained that way for years. When it moved many of the shops in that part of town suffered with a drop in shoppers.
Now as some of the new part of town where Tesco's has been built is doing the same again and the area where the Post Office is suffering and Woolworth's, Superdrug, Boots and similar retailers are feeling the pinch.
So far all it would take is to see Tesco's offer to install a Post Office and I suspect most of our town's retail area would die. They do practically everything else.
God I HATE this bloody Govt! Post Offices should not be closed. They should be kept open, even at a loss, as a social service.
My mother lives in a village on the edge of Dartmoor. It is unchanged since I first went there (in the 60s). Remarkably it still has a functioning school. The Post Office has been closed though. A van comes once or twice a week. That is simply just not good enough.
It is true that the Post Office is more than a business. Many of the services that the Post Office could do "Over the counter" and possibly online if they were allowed have been taken away.
Many are Government services.
The Government even changed how you collect your benefits and pensions. Often having to have them paid into a bank account assuming you have one. Many older or poorer people do not.
And to keep collecting them at the Post Office you had to open another account. If I'm not mistaken I think I heard that this service will be stopped at some point in the future.
This is one service where we seem to have gone backward rather than forward.
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