If Gordon Brown can renege on his election promise for a referendum (as one sensed he would) what chance do honest citizens have with a Post Office Consultation? Post Offices will be closed despite an upsurge of resistance by those who still believe in

If Gordon Brown can renege on his election promise for a referendum (as one sensed he would) what chance do honest citizens have with a Post Office Consultation?

Post Offices will be closed despite an upsurge of resistance by those who still believe in democracy. Those who gain power rarely heed those who gave it them. We bang our heads against walls or arrogance and cynicism, indifference and self-interest. Such is the world we have made for ourselves.

Our protest against local road closures lead to a similar Consultation.

Our Labour Council's slogan You Talk, We Listen lead to my proposing an addendum: Then We Do What We Bloodywell Like. And they did.

We may expect the same from the Post Office.

It is in the nature of Consultations to ignore public protest.

Decisions have already been made.

Such is the world we endure.

One is reminded of the perfidious closure of railway branch lines and what that eventually lead to. Once again we are threatened with another hole in the dyke of our crumbling culture. We do well to protest.

But Post Offices will be closed.

Without closures, we are told, others will be endangered.

Were they referring to those eager to take them over?

Monopolists on the sideline poised to profit from the misappropriation of yet another public service? Another treachery?

The threat is the complete privatisation of all Post Office services which will lead to higher prices, redundancies, greater anger and despair.

The loss of another institution which serves a widespread public need.

It deserves to be defended.

But what can the powerless do? -- their protests will be unheeded yet again.

Democracy for ordinary people begins and ends at the ballot box.

They vote for a party they knows will ultimately fail them, then vote it out: Their democratic power is over.

Those at the tops of Government and Post Offices should heed those whose trust they are losing.

They should stop believing we are not aware of what they are up to.

It is a verity that what appears to be a democatic process frequently conceals the heinous mask of dictatorship of which so-called Consultations are a deceptive instrument.

Pretention towards public concern do not pass unnoticed on our television screen.

They are after bigger prizes - those who won our trust then lost it.

Prizes they always win. Prizes we always lose.

Barry Bermange

Muswell Hill, N10