VITAL TO GET POST OFFICE PLANS RIGHT

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The decline of the Post Office has been one of the sorrier tales of vanishing Britain in recent years.

For lifetimes the Post Office was a vital service, meeting point and focus of each community across the land.

As fewer people used its services – and the Post Office was not allowed to diversify sufficiently to save its fortunes – these beacons across the land went out, one by one.

Now they stand miles apart, forcing long journeys for those who need them most, to post parcels, collect pensions.

Of course there are modern replacements to many services the Post Office has offered – benefits can be paid direct into bank accounts.

But what Britain is sadly lacking these days is a sense of community, of belonging, of feeling part of the system – and before BNP supporters start agreeing, this is nothing to do with our multicultural society, which has brought us a wealth of improvements.

Royal Mail workers are gathering more signatures to add to the thousands already collected in Cumbria and hundreds of thousands beyond to stop the sale of 30 per cent of the Post Office. A third of the company would be private enterprise, dictated only by profit. And the words profit and public service do not marry well.

The Government should tread carefully as another much-loved public institution is dismantled. Politicians are fast eroding trust and this would seem another dangerous step towards the gulf between us and them becoming too wide to heal.