Poste restante
NEW Year's Eve. The little sub-Post- Office is open, selling its usual stock of sweets and papers, but over its postal counter there is a blanket. I ask for a stamp. The owner shakes his head: 'Every Post Office in London closed today at four o'clock.' If he would sell me a stamp, I could write to the Centre for Policy Stu- dies, whose latest work, Privatise the Post, (£3.90), calls for the Post Office's services to be put into competitive hands. Dear Centre (I would say), there are already more than 10,000 privatised post offices, each in the hands of its sub-postmaster. He is not allowed, though, to open his counter to meet demand. It is a term of his contract that he must not be open for postal business when the nationalised post offices are shut. One growl from Sir Gordon Borne, in the Office of Fair Trading, would set him free. Let's hear it.
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