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VOTE UKIP!-ON MAY 7-2015

MAJOR ISSUES BULLETIN

TONY BLAIR has said customers can only BLAME THEMSELVES for the cull of POST OFFICES.

James Chapman

D.Mail -Deputy Political Editor -Dec.,13, 2006.

TONY BLAIR has said customers can only blame themselves for the cull of Post Offices to be unveiled.

The Prime Minister said they had stopped using Post Offices for everyday transactions -meaning many branches were no longer viable'

Ministers are tomorrow expected to announce that up to 3000 Post Offices -one in five-are to close.

Opposition MPs accused MR Blair of passing the buck for the closure programme.

Revenue lost after services were withdrawn by the Post Office £168million last year according to Liberal Democrat figures. Drivers are encouraged to buy road tax online, television licenses are no longer available at the Post Office and 98 per cent of Pensions are paid straight into bank accounts.

Benefit claimants have been encouraged to have payments directly to their bank.

When asked if he accepted some of the blame at his monthly Press Conference in Downing Street yesterday, Mr Blair said:

'The reason why under this Government Post Offices have continued to close is not because it has been Government policy to close them'

It has been because people have made an individual choice to transact their business differently.

'But there's a simple fact that we can't get around -that 4million fewer people are using the Post Office to transact their business than a few years ago.

'The point is that as a result of people transacting their business through bank accounts and online, as this next generation of pensioners come through, it's a very different situation that we are dealing with.

'We cannot go on putting a massive amount of public subsidy in'

[BUT is quite right for them to spend hundreds of millions of ponds a year to encourage the separation of sects in our community -though we now hear they have as usual discovered yet again that they have made a gigantic blunder and will now look at their recipients claims in the interests of the community in general.]

A quarter of the Post Office network have already been shut down since Labour came to power in 1997, leaving 14,000 branches

The Department of trade and Industry is expected to demand tomorrow that further 2,500 to 3,000 are to close.

Liberal Democrat Trade spokesman ED Davey said:

THE Government has made decision after decision, in department after department, to undermine the revenue of Post Offices.

'It's nothing to do with customers. In fact, PENSIONERS were BULLIED into switching away from Post Office pension books to bank accounts by the GOVERNMENT.

'The total revenue lost to the Post Office last year from

LOST GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

WAS

£168million

-and that's increasing all the time.

It's MINISTERS across Whitehall

WHO ARE TO BLAME

Colin Baker, of the National Federation of Sub Postmasters said:

'It was THIS GOVERNMENT that took away the POST OFFICE card account.

'How that's the fault of the CUSTOMERS defies LOGIC.

[Well with Tony Blair it isn't a matter of whether the matter is essential to the rural community but simply a matter of eradicating something which was on his HIT LIST and that was the end of the matter.]

David Cameron -[The Silent Man -'I support Tony Blair when he is right']

said:' Post Offices provided the 'social glue' for many communities and announced a campaign to try and shore them up.

The Tory leader is to urge councils to use Post Offices as 'one-stop shops' to access their services to help generate new business and increase the number of customers coming in.

'I think the Government has got this very badly wrong,' Mr Cameron said: 'My great fear is this network is going to go'

Trade Secretary Alistair Darling will make a statement to the Commons tomorrow on the future of the £150million annual subsidy which keeps the rural Post Office network alive.

[Well there are plenty of funds to keep an illegal war going in Iraq which must be costing millions every day of the year and a colossal amount of waste in non-productive QUANGOS costing millions every month of the year which in total are costing the taxpayer billions of taxpayer's hard earned income - apart from the 10 billion Rebate returned to the E U by Tony Blair - and massive support for urban areas and now to see the Government's attempt to consider closing down such a vital community link shows how vindictive they are of the rural population. The fact is that there are no votes in it for them.]

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DECEMBER/06