P Off, not B Off. Whoever heard of a Bost office?

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The reason I stopped banking with the NatWest is because I was fed up of queuing. There was never a "good time" to go to the branch in Dartford to avoid the queue, because whether there were four customers or forty, they never had enough staff to serve them. So I took my business elsewhere; I switched to a (rival) internet bank.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "rival" Post Office. Nor is there any way of weighing and sending parcels via broadband. Which is why there was a twenty-five minute queue at the Post Office down the road from me yesterday: people were literally queuing outside the door (and it's quite a long shop). If they're constantly so busy, why is the government shutting half of them down?

The main reason is, of course, money. There may well be a lot of custom, but if they're only spending a pound on stamps each, there's not much money going in the till. To generate revenue, postmasters are forced to sell things like insurance, phone plans and advertising space on flashy display screens. To save cash, they cut down on staff.

And this is the problem: fewer staff means bigger queues, and bigger queues means less people bother with non-essential Post Office visits (by which I mean things like paying your car tax, or picking up passport application forms). In the past, these at least got people through the door, even if they didn't spend very much. The government cite our increasing tendency to do these things over the phone or online as justification for closing branches. It's a vicious circle.

Everyone will suffer from a cut-down Post Office. Fewer branches will just have the same effect as having fewer staff. That's not good for anyone.

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