A RECENT call back to my former home town of Radcliffe produced the information that the Post Office had been "abandoned".

When the former crown office on Dale Street was closed, we regular customers were given extravagant reassurance by the people from the Post Office HQ at Capstan House in Salford. These were about how the new service would be even better, though I frankly did not believe a word of it.

The council wrote to say that it was none of their concern and the Bury office was not under attack. This was true, if a wee bit insensitive. By the time that Dale Street closed Radcliffe was, regrettably, being administered from Bury.

The story about the loss of the Radcliffe Post Office was true and there was a notice referring regular users to post offices still in business and headed by the Crown Office in Bury. Not a problem if one is aged 31, has a car and does not mind the parking fees in Bury and the walk across town.

But in the case of a 91-year-old on two sticks, who has lost her licence through old age, who cannot afford to run a car anyway on her "New Labour" pension, and who finds long walks a bit challenging, the option of going to Bury is not a winner.

I know such a lady and called to see her but her neighbours were already on to it. I should have presumed as much; Radcliffe people are like that.

There are reputed to have been several recent changes of ownership of the privatised Radcliffe sub-office, accompanied by the downgrading of the services available, such as the sale of car tax discs.

All of this begs the question of who is responsible for kicking the pants off the lying Capstan House people? Why is someone not winning damages for the residents of Radcliffe in respect of the costs now being incurred in going to distant post offices? Why are the Capstan House people not being collectively disciplined, given the falsehoods they peddled in assuring that all would remain well after the loss of the Dale Street crown office?

The ones to kick up a fuss should be the local councillors but I am told that they have mostly been strangely silent on the issue. Surely this cannot be right.

FIAT LUX