The blog is back!

The attention all shipping blog has been in a hiatus for the past seven months while I'll been gallivanting across Europe, Asia and Australia (details of which could be followed on my travel blog). I returned to the UK on Thursday and having had a few days to get over the jet lag and caught up on seven months of news from friends, family and wider world it's about time the show got back on the road.

I arrived back in the UK amidst news of expected widespread Post Office closures. This makes my blood boil as many Post Offices are central to rural communities and it seems to be a further step that the government is either unaware or uninterested in the needs and workings of towns and villages.

One of the most glorious features of Post Offices is that they're the most local of services, residing often at the heart of village life. Despite previous closures Post Offices are still for many an easy walk down the street; a crucial factor for the sizable elderly population that exists in rural communities. If these were to go thousands if not millions would be faced with a substantial journey to the next branch, which in turn creates untold additional car journeys and yet further CO2 emissions at a time when the government is in theory looking at cutting this greenhouse gas. Closures will also rive the heart out of many small towns and villages and toll a further death nell at a time when community spirit should be being nurtured.

Particularly annoying is the fact that these closures are being announced with no effort being made to look into options for diversifying Post Offices' incomes. One particularly interesting suggestion I heard on the radio was to use the network of Post Office branches as collection hubs for the many couriered parcels that are undelivered each day. Currently these return to local courier depots, often scores of miles away and redelivery may be attempted another couple of times which on a national basis much constitute a huge number of needless road journeys and CO2 emissions. However more broadly there have got to be a number of avenues that can be tried to introduce new services to the Post Offices and boost turnover.