Paul Murphy - More Labour hypocrisy over Post Office closures

Welsh Secretary, Paul Murphy, has again been criticised for being part of a Government which is closing Post Offices – while campaigning to save branches in his own constituency. Here is Ian Parri's (Daily Post writer) take on it...

Talking of post offices, it didn't suprise me to see hypocritical MPs who've been been campaigning to save brances in their own constituencies trooping sheepishly into the government lobbies to give the wholesale closure plans their seal of approval.

Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy, who was sufficiently perturbed by this week's stem cells row to threaten his resignation, was among them.

He's actually been along to Pontnewynydd post office in his Torfaen consistuency to lend his support to postmaster Chirav Dalal's attempts to keep the service open.

Mr Murphy urged locals to write to the Post Office to express their views. I assume he understood it was highly unlikely anybody would be doing so to support the branch's closure.

Mr Murphy said: "I understand how important it is for the Post Office to survive as a business. However, when they propose to close local post offices, they really have to take into account important local issues."

See also: 'Nimby' Murphy under fire in PO row

Olympic Disaster for Wales

Aside from the obvious fact that Wales will gain little if anything from the London Olympics it now seems that we'll actually be worse off! This is because we'll be losing out on £29m of lottery money which will have to be raided as a result of rising costs. Doubtless that number will increase even further by 2012. And they say Wales couldn't survive without handouts from London?

For the full depressing story see Hywel Trewyn's article in the Daily Post.