West Midlands: Your comments...

Nick Watson The Politics Show West Midlands

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Some of your comments on today's programme...

Calls

If the Government is so worried about Post Offices losing money, why did it take away their ability for people to make bill payments and pay their TV license?
Mrs Dudley, Sutton Coldfield

Post Offices wouldn't be losing money if they hadn't taken away all the services they used to offer.
Mrs Biddle, Staffordshire

If the Post Offices are so important, why don't they register as charities? That way they could use voluntary labour and pay no rents on their premises?
Mrs Dudley, John, Market Drayton

Pat McFadden said it is irresponsible for the taxpayer to subsidise Post Offices with half a million pounds a day. We have never been asked if we wanted to subsidise the European Union by one hundred thousand pounds a minute! Our Government bends over backwards to do what the EU wants. Why should we close our Post Offices?
Alan Sheath, Aldridge

I think this Government is just showing the contempt it seems to have for pensioners. Most pensioners do not have access to a computer, and the dangers of online shopping are obvious.
Barbara Downs, Ashby-de-la-Zouch

Lots of OAPs have got to travel miles to get their pensions now. The sooner this Government is out, the better.
Anon, Worcester

By closing down the Post Offices and insisting people pay their bills on the internet or by direct debit, people's freedom of choice is being affected.
Bill, Stoke on Trent

I don't want Post Offices to close. Messages will have to be sent in other ways, which don't necessarily benefit everyone.
Mrs Batachira, Birkenhill

E-Mails

Definitely not. I'm sorry but if a post office doesn't have the number of customers it needs to make a profit, like any other business, it must close
Mrs C E Fletcher, Staffordshire

It is about time that Gordon Brown acknowledged that charity should begin at home. He is prepared to rend the social fabric of this country by the closure of post offices and refusing to subsidise university students while at the same time giving multi billions of taxpayers' money to Africa and India and towards fighting foreign wars.
Jack Belfitt, England

The main problem with the post office is that it doesn't get a fair crack at the whip and all the good work is taken by American and other foreign companies operating in our country and taking profits out. Where my partner works, they have recently taken away the contract from the post office and given the work to TNT. It was madness to allow these companies to operate here when an established system with its own infrastructure that needs the work to stop it becoming a financial dead weight due to existing costs, already exists. It was never broken so why did they try to fix it?
David Barron, England

One line of questioning which always appears to be ignored is: has the withdrawal of services such as paying many bills such as motor and TV taxes and many more add to the losses per week or has it reduced them? To me and a lot of other users of post offices, the government deliberately set out to make the losses worse by withdrawing many of these services and stifled many that could have been added in order to justify the closing of this vital community service. It makes me wonder is Labour really the party of the people?
Patrick Askins, Warwick

I am disgusted that "New Labour" continues to support Tory policies and allows so many Post Offices to close.
J. E. Hawkes, England

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