Deadbrain
18 Oct 2006
Subpostmasters have delivered a petition signed by four million people to Downing Street, calling for rural post offices to be saved. The petition had been due to arrive last week, but it mysteriously vanished for a few days before turning up on the floor of Bootle sorting office covered in bite marks.
"This is a huge petition on a very important issue," said Douglas Ramsbottom, a subpostmaster. "It was actually signed by closer to six million people, but we had to remove some of the names because they didn't give a full UK postcode in the address column."
Campaigners say that rural post offices could vanish altogether within a few years, leaving many elderly people without access to other people wearing cardigans. Services are increasingly being supplied online; already all parcels over 5kg have to be sent by email due to health and safety restrictions.
The petition is the joint largest ever to be handed in to Downing Street, alongside a 1996 petition calling for the abolition of Noel Edmonds. Staff are struggling to find space to store the boxes of papers before they are sent off to be incinerated. "Normal Downing Street procedure is to leave them under the table in the hall for a couple of weeks, just so the Prime Minister has chance to ignore them as he walks past," said a Number 10 source. "We've had to send some over to John Prescott's office – there's not much going on there so there's plenty of room – but he's threatening to burn them in a big bonfire on College Green so he can toast marshmallows. As well as being a bit insensitive, that's also technically against the rules within half a mile of Parliament."
Police on the gates of Downing Street, who had to put every box through the security scanner, are said to be relieved that the petition was no larger. Eyewitnesses say that the screening caused a queue of special advisers stretching back to Parliament Square, and Cherie Blair's stylist was kept waiting for almost an hour.
"When they rang to tell us they were bringing a petition, they said there were about five million signatures," said Sgt Greg Mullet, "but by the time it got here there were only four million. They couldn't explain where the rest had got to – they just gave me a form to fill out."
"There was also a hell of a lot of junk mail on the floor when they left," he added.
