Bob, I think you'll find that Labour have closed far more Post Offices in 11 years than the previous Conservative government did in almost 20 years.

Please check your sums.

I've checked my sums - it didn't take long because I haven't done any sums. Nor did I mentioning closing post offices, but I did refer to selling off the business to private companies. If you can't tell the difference drop me an e-mail and I'll explain it.

I believe that Jon Cruddas' proposal would halt post office closures and if it was enthusiastically pursued would reverse the process for the benefit of whole communities across the country who have been let down by the banking system.

That doesn't mean I think that there is a hope in hell that this crypto-tory government will actually do it. Sadly.

The problem is if your on benefits the DWP ask you for a bank account number, if you say you have a post office account they do everything possible to get you to change, it took my wife three weeks to the DWP to send her benefits through to a post office and in the end the DWP stated a bank is the governments preferred payment process.

making post office into banks would be a good idea, but even the post office card account is run by an American bank

Bob, don’t we in effect have a people’s bank? It’s called Northern Rock Bradford and Bingley RBS Lloyds/HBOS i.e.NRBBRLH or UK Banking PLC

Sadly not, Bob. Taking some shares in Lloyds/TSB doesn't give us ownership... and I don't know about your area, but we haven't got a Bradford and Bingley or Northern Rock anywhere near us, but we do have a Post Office we would like to keep.

Oh no I agree with something Bob has published, arrrgghh I'm going for a lie down in a dark room

Go on, be honest, the nurse requires you to do that anyway.

Wasn't there some sort of New Labour scheme about 10 years ago to create a basic bank account to prevent exclusion from financial services ? Must have been around the time Harriet Harperson was going on about stake holder pensions, but got the sack instead of delivering them to most 'stake holders'.

Anyway I would have thought the Coop bank qualified for this role doesn't it ?

If you wanted to be far reaching then providing basic banking services through TV's or better mobile phones might work. Branches are doomed.

Jct: This great idea shows exhibits the Sparta effect. When visiting, your gold was deposited in the city bank for clay tokens used while in town and cashed out upon leaving. Sparta got the interest while trading went on with the clay chips.
If all bought stamps for cash, the state would get the interest while trading would go on with the stamp tokens.
Peg your local stamp currency to the Time Standard of Money (how many stamp-pounds/hour average labor) and Hours earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks globally!
In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours.
U.N. Millennium Declaration UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is for a time-based currency to restructure the global financial architecture.
See my banking systems engineering analysis at http://youtube.com/kingofthepaupers with an index of articles at http://johnturmel.com/kotp.htm