Cambria Politico - The Political Blog

So Rhodri Morgan is not computer-literate.

Quite an admission for one of the top brains in the Assembly.

I somehow don’t quite believe it. I’m sure he knows full well how to find agendas for cabinet meetings on the intranet - that is the internet which is restricted to AMs, and tells a little of what is happening in the fifth floor inner sanctum six weeks before the rest of us can find something about it on the net.

The admission came in a plenary discussion on the (lack of) future for the current post office network. No-one has yet spelled it out so bluntly yet, but almost the entire network possesses no worthwhile future.

The First Minister admitted he was one of those who still renews his car tax at the local post office because “I cannot use the internet”.

Walking through his home village of Michaelston-le-pit recently, I failed to notice any post office; perhaps it never had one. This is a village in which even the phone box was adorned inside with cobwebs, plus a notice saying, “No cash accepted - use a card instead”.

During the Senedd exchanges, Mr Morgan had little to say about how to save even the reduced post office network which London says it wants to retain - beyond that they find “new sources of income streams to replace the ones they are losing because of the internet”.

After admitting that the Post Office is losing contracts right, left and centre, he then hurled out the blockbuster that the PO Card Account is now up for grabs. The so-called saviour of the post office system is now nothing of the sort. What is there to prevent the contract going to a bidder offering only a small minimal network, at a price that the Post Office with its wide network fixed costs is unable to match ?

Lots of crocodile tears in the Senedd, I expect.

No-one got up to say the entire issue has been surely rigged by London in favour of the populous home counties and large urban areas.

The Exchequer is duty-bound to save money, the First Minister argued. But not when the end result could be only a handful of offices surviving, open only a few hours a day to weight parcels, stamps for letters having been bought at the local newsagents’.

What is the end-game ? You can be sure our First Minister has never been told; the Assembly is far too pro-post office.

The saga of post office closures is one of the best reasons ever seen for Wales to be able to make its own decisions based on the needs of a largely rural nation, rather than having to creep along in the slipstream of that so-different land to the east.