National blog on Post Office consultations

The Post Office consultation - see yesterdays blog - is open until 8th March - there is also now a simple way to get your point across quickly and easily. A blog set up especailly to cover this issue. Anyone with an interest can visit the blog and leave their comment on the consultation questions, and read what others are saying.

Visit www.ruralaction.org.uk, click any of the ‘Comment’ links and have your say. Here's my comment:

I am deeply disturbed by these proposals. There is a complete lack of joined up thinking.

The local Post Office and shop is a cornerstone of a sustainable society, based on strong, highly self-reliant communities. Closing post offices leads to less community, longer distances travelled and more carbon emissions. The impacts will once again be felt most by the more vulnerable and poorer sections of our communities.

The problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil (the point at which world oil production rises to its highest point before declining ie massive increases in oil prices over coming years ahead) mean that we need to be returning to local provision of services not moving away from them.

If the Government was serious about these issues then they would be looking at restoring our local shops and Post Offices. We have to start tackling emissions in every way possible. As Michael Meacher, former Environment Minister, said: "What we, and the government, need to get our minds around is that we are at war: at war against climate catastrophe, presenting us a far greater threat towards our survival than 1939."

There are signs of hope that people are starting to act - see my Ruscombe Green blog posts like on 17th Feb - but this planned reduction in the number of Post Offices is very wrong.

I would strongly urge people to object to these proposals in the strongest terms: they will likely be consider criminal by future generations. The word 'criminal' is not used lightly: the average Somali is about 100 times more likely to die from events caused by climate change than the average American, despite emitting roughly 16,000 times less carbon.

We must cut emissions not create more.