When did you stop beating your wife?

With the 'consultation' on the closures of Post Offices in the Western Isles being launched today, I draw your attention to my previous advice that if you object to the closure of a Post Office, then you need to nominate another. It's not a case of 'how many'? Just 'which ones'?

Hence the post title.

This is very bad news for the small communities directly affected, especially as the alternatives just do not exist.

• Banks? None outside Stornoway and Tarbert.
  
• Local shops? Will not be able to deal with pensions and benefit payments.
  
• Nearest TV licence paypoint? Miles. By bus. That is infrequent and not designed for local shopping trips.
• Visit to Stornoway? Probably the only workable answer, causing further decline in these communities.

Is it too late to do anything? Probably, except around the margins, as the decision to close 2,500 Post Offices was taken long ago, and now the targets have to be met. That the targets are nonsense and based on a desktop exercise, rather than reality is neither here nor there.

I confess to being depressed by the repeated persistent and unending gutting of the communities who are saying one thing and doing another. Having campaigned against the previous round of closures in 1994/5 (?) proposed by the evil Thatcher Government, I am sure that many of the Labour activists who joined the campaign then will be rather shamefaced.

Further coverage in the Stornoway Gazette, Hebrides News and the Shetland News.