17th April 2006

It is a great news that the Paganhill Post Office has been saved (Citizen 11/04/06 SNJ 12/04/06), but am I alone in being left with the feeling that the community has been mugged?

Tesco announced plans to close the current counter at the One Stop shop on Stratford Road 18 months ago. There  was a huge campaign to keep it open with several large cross-party demonstrations and a march (see photos). Yet the supermarket giant insisted there was not room to keep the post office counters - despite their Nailsworth store of a similar size retaining a post office.

The Greens launched a boycott of Tesco, but at this point almost everyone rolled over and we were even grateful that Tesco said they would keep the counter open while an alternative site for the post office was sought. Then came months of work by community leaders to put together the current scheme. Yes, there are significant benefits for the local Maypole hall, but it seems extraordinary that many thousands of pounds of our tax payers money is being used to develop a new post office when we already had one in the One Stop before the Tesco takeover.

Surely this is yet another example of Tesco walking all over us? Why wont our politicians and government stand up to them? Worse still all the indications are that if current Labour party policy of more "market liberalisation" for postal services continues we will face more closures, including perhaps the new Maypole Hall service.

Philip Booth

See details of Parliamentary report re power of supermarkets:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1696989,00.html