Email to the Shadow Chancellor re: #PostOfficeSavings #benefits #disability #advocacy #financialmanagement

[GKH]

"anneliese.dodds.mp@parliament.uk
Fri, 1 Apr at 20:27

----- Forwarded message -----
From: Gerard Hales
To: moneybox@bbc.co.uk
Sent: Friday, 1 April 2022, 20:25:14 BST
Subject: Fw: Problems with Closing Post Office Savings to Benefit Payments AND 3Dsecure

Dear MB
I hope you understand that Cashplus offered a debit card I could use online (although the requirement to have a mobile phone in order to use 3DSecure has increasingly become an issue, even with PayPal), also keeping my Post Office Savings Acc. secure off-line, this and the ability to set up and manage direct debits easily were the main benefits, now I must pay for the privilege of receiving the most basic services. Thank you.

Gerard Hales

P.S The whole, “force you to own a mobile phone” issue is becoming worse and worse. I have a landline and Ethernet to my P.C. Why would I pay more for another service I don’t want? We are being strong-armed.

----- Forwarded message -----

Sent: Friday, 1 April 2022, 20:11:37 BST

Subject: Problems with Closing Post Office Savings to Benefit Payments AND 3Dsecure

Dear All
I refuse to own a mobile so I can’t use 3DSecure and even PayPal is iffy now, this is why I often call to place orders.
The Post Office won’t recieve benefit payments anymore so millions are having to move accounts. Cashplus charge a fortune for transfers and transactions, VISA at the Co-Op also requires 3DSecure. None of the three are signed up to any kind of switching service so there is no benefit to changing acc. (as I am doing to the Co-Op), it’s outrageous, we are being targeted by the big financial players! This is genocide!

Nb. The Job Centre called me in to verify my identity when I changed my recipient bank for U.C benefits. I will be forced to see them again when I change from Cashplus to the Co-Op (Cashplus is now unworkable as a day-to-day because of the expense of transferring money, transactions and accessing cash -not issues when my Post Office Savings Acc. was my benefit recipient-). Outrageous!!! I hope you cover this BBC. Happy to give you more information or be interviewed (I had one of the old Post Office benefit recipient acc.s, myself, and many others, simply switched to a savings acc. when those acc.s were closed). This suggests the machinations of private interests, it’s a “fire sale” of services at the expense of the people. No benefit for the benefit recipients only those with pre-existing capital are rewarded, what a disgusting attack on the vulnerable, it’s a mugging on the public purse. Thank you.

Gerard Hales"

Nb. This also means I am having to transfer all my direct debits “manually” (as it were), because none of the three institutions (Post Office, Cashplus and Co-Op Bank), are signed up to the switching service, thus we do all the spade work too (but you mustn’t call it that)!

Furthermore think of the number of people with disabilities affected by this who are literally being pushed around in order to confirm their identities (whilst the faceless money-movers retain their anonymity)! Many have difficulty managing their money, I myself use an advocacy service because I have a stress-related mental health condition! Clearly the issue of the negative effect on the physical and/or mental health of those affected was not taken into consideration by any of the politicians, regulators or financial institutions concerned when the decision was being made to allow the, increasingly privatised (see post below), Post Office to behave this way.
Also, with reference to the “Royal Mail”, as was, does it not seem strange that Charles Windsor did not show any interest in protecting the institution thus preserving it for the people? Makes me wonder just who was (and still is), holding which knife to the throats of our dear monarchy.

I have reported my concerns to the Financial Conduct Authority, I will let you know their response. Prior to contacting the Financial Ombudsman I have also made complaint to the Post Office.

[KarenEliot]

Excellently put. I had no idea this b.s. was going on.

My younger son tried to claim universal credit but was eventually sanctioned for not cooperating. This is partly his fault for never taking any notice of people telling him what to do (which at one level I am very pleased about, we didn’t raise fools). But it’s mainly because the whole system is built on the assumption that everything can “easily” be done online. For that you need disposable income of £40 pcm and more for the web connection or a fairly recent cellphone with web connectivity (and the data allowance to go with it) which doesn’t come free either. Even if you have that there’s a basic level of literacy which is taken for granted, but which he doesn’t have (Special Educational Needs as they used to call it).

[GKH]

De-humansing b’tches…it’s alienating too…“people who need people are the luckiest people” I wish these b’tards all they wish themselves…

[GKH]

"Financial services

Main article: Post Office Money

The Post Office provides credit cards, insurance products, mortgages, access to high street banking services and savings through the Post Office Money umbrella brand which was launched in 2015. Most Post Office Money branded products are provided by Bank of Ireland (UK) plc with Post Office Ltd acting as an appointed representative and credit broker. However, with the sale of the Bank of Ireland’s UK assets to Jaja Finance in 2019,[16] Post Office branded Credit Cards are now issued by Capital One UK.[17] Life insurance is provided in partnership with Neilson Financial Services [18]

Branch banking

A mobile post office in Borrowby, North Yorkshire

Personal banking services are offered on behalf of a number of “partner banks” that the Post Office has agreements with. Although different services are available on behalf of different institutions, these may include cash withdrawals, paying in cash and cheques, and balance enquiries. Some post offices also have cash machines, mainly provided by Bank of Ireland.

Business banking services are also offered for customers of twenty different UK banks.[19] Services include balance enquiries, cash withdrawals, depositing cash and cheques, and giving change." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail

"As part of the Postal Services Act 2011, Post Office Ltd became independent of Royal Mail Group on 1 April 2012.[6] A ten-year inter-business agreement was signed between the two companies to allow post offices to continue issuing stamps and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail.[7] The Act also contained the option for Post Office Ltd to become a mutual organisation in the future.[8]

On 8 February 2013, Post Office Ltd announced it was planning to move around seventy of its Crown post offices into shops. This would reduce the Crown network, which it stated was losing £40 million a year, to around 300.[9]

On 27 November 2013, the government committed an additional £640 million of funding for 2015 to 2018 to allow Post Office Ltd to complete its network modernisation.[10]

In April 2016, the Post Office agreed to hand over up to 61 more branches to WHSmith in a 10-year deal. The deal was condemned as “blatant back-door privatisation” by the Communications Workers Union.[1" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Ltd

"We’re excited to announce that we’ve completed the purchase of Post Office’s broadband and telephony business. This means welcoming over 450,000 new broadband customers into the Shell Energy family.

We’ll start moving Post Office customers over to Shell Energy in August. In the meantime, their service will continue without any changes or interruptions. This includes pricing, how they pay their bills and access to customer services. We can’t wait to welcome them on board and introduce customers to a world of new benefits, including exclusive savings on fuel and more with the Shell Go+ loyalty programme.

The customer experience is at the heart of what we do - we’ve even been recognised by Resolver with an award for our broadband customer service. That’s why it’s our focus to deliver a smooth transition, and a warm welcome to Shell Energy.

We’ll begin contacting Post Office broadband customers shortly to introduce ourselves properly and explain the next steps. We look forward to our future together." https://www.shellenergy.co.uk/blog/post/post-office-broadband-joins-shell-energy

“Royal Mail was split from the Post Office which remains publicly owned, deliberately engineered to reduce opposition to the privatisation of Royal Mail, and now the Government is running the Post Office into the ground and privatising via the backdoor by aggressively franchising out Crown Office services.” https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/terry-pullinger/royal-mail-post-office_b_9166652.html

According to HM’s Government; "Privatising Royal Mail will lead to post office closures

No. The Post Office is a separate and distinct business with its own independent Board that now
has the freedom to focus on growing its revenues and getting the most out of its branch
network. In addition, the Government made a clear commitment that there will be no post office
closure programme. Instead, in 2010, we agreed funding of £1.34 billion over four years to
maintain a network of at least 11,500 branches, and to modernise around 6,000 branches,
bringing significant benefits to customers.

Post Offices will lose Royal Mail’s business

That is pure scaremongering. Royal Mail and the Post Office are natural partners and the Chief
Executive of Royal Mail has said it would be “unthinkable” that there would not always be a
strong commercial relationship between the two companies. A long term commercial
agreement between the Post Office and Royal Mail for the continued supply of services was
signed in 2012." https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/239307/bis-13-756-royal-mail-myth-busters-revised-sep12-2013.pdf

Not according to my (well known as highly politically active), friend Tony Twine (now retired), who reported getting a bill for double his originally contracted (with the Post Office), monthly charge that he is now contesting.

Anyone else have anything on this, we need to build a clearer picture (esp. when the activities of those with vested private interests are so occulted)?

The notion of running a Post Office banking service as a purely publicly owned concern (esp.), for the benefit of those on a fixed income (many of whom are also subject to a savings limit between -£6,000 - £16,000 above which no means tested benefits are paid-), in order to protect both their and the public’s money does not seem to occur. Why? It’s not in the paid lackeys’ interests!

[KarenEliot]

Most of that I was aware of. I would guess a fair few branches of W H Smith, with their 4 hours a day post office franchise, have closed since then?

Only a couple of weeks ago a letter turned up from Shell. I was mystified but, yes, they are our phone and broadband provider. In fact it’s still BT infrastructure and service provision but resold by them (or Sky or Virgin or EE or the water company I wouldn’t be surprised).

If a video appeared showing a Post Office van in Kiev with a bunch of people dressed as Russian troops hurtling out and blowing up a cuddly puppy factory would I be surprised for more than 5 seconds…? Probably not. Pretty much everything is pantomime now.

[RhisiartGwilym]

Pantomime is a kindly word for it, K! Bloody hell, G, that bilge-speak PR shite that you copied here from those crooks makes me want to throw up. I don’t know how you can keep your sanity, having to deal constantly with such merde.

We need most urgently to overthrow the whole idiot doctrine of neoliberal ‘free’ markets, and get the socially-necessary civilised services, such as the Post Office used to provide, back into publicly-owned monopoly utilities. Turning shit-for-brains spivs on the make loose to quick-buck commercialise absolutely everything that people hold dear, and need seriously, is an utterly bankrupt doctrine. It’s so destructive and chaos-inducing that it doesn’t even serve efficiently it’s real purpose - of letting US-strongholded gangster capitalists loot everything they can grab.

The chaos just behind the PR-speak that you copied here makes that blindingly clear.

I feel a certain back-handed enthusiasm for the whole-globe upheaval which the current paradigm-shift in global power relations is creating right now, as Russia (with China at its back) shocks the Anglozionist empire into screeching hysteria, followed by baffled paralysis.

I’m sure the upheavals will unleash some Interesting Times on all of us, especially we in Europe who are just now having our faces rubbed in the mess we’ve been comatose fools enough to allow the Swamp creatures to create. But even so, I can’t help laughing with utter schadenfreudischer glee! Thank god the Az empire - the stronghold of the criminally-insane spivs behind neoliberalism - is palpably on the skids right now. Skid on, suckers! Shock on, Russia! Eat your heart out Flabbivicki Null-Kag and her hubby Giant Kag-Flab, the gigantic fat-berg down in the neolib sewers. A real pleasure to watch all the toxic enthusiasms of them and their spiv cronies in the Swamp falling apart in their hands!

[RobG]

GKH, I know it must be very tiring, but try to keep up the good work.

We all know that if the psychos manage to bring in digital currency we are all fecked.

For the record, I don’t have a mobile phone, not even a ‘dumb’ one.

There are plus points to this, not least because you won’t be able to pay tax to the psychos to finance their idiotic and violent wars.

And if your car breaks down in the countryside, and you don’t have a mobile phone, you’ll make lots of new friends.

[GKH]

You’re a good man…we need many more like you…

[GKH]

Also guys the Co-Op bank I’m switching to has a branch in the city several long miles away and that’s it…West End Village (half a mile or so away), has a Post Office but no other financial institutions of any kind…such must be the case all over the country (where there still are post offices), …what a terrible indictment of our financial structure! It is precisely those people most vulnerable and most susceptible to the machinations of big capital who are being discriminated against and disenfranchised.
In case you are wondering why I am using these three institutions Co-Op Bank, Cashplus and Post Office Savings it is because I haven’t trusted the High St. Banks (although on the high st. the Co-Op is, notionally at least, “ethical” in its conduct), since the credit crunch…What sane person would?..I don’t want the money-movers grubby hands on my finances (I also have a savings account with Wessex Community Bank, a “not-for-profit” community bank, that currently receives payment from my Cashplus acc. but whose payments I must move to the Co-Op myself). Does it also not seem rather more than serendipitous that it is customers utilising such institutions who are being penalised? We need oversight on this, we are being shafted.

[KarenEliot]

I lived for about five years in a village not that far from here which had a garage that sold a few odds and sods (junk food basically) and one pub that hosted a post office service one afternoon a week. I only ever walked thru the pub once as I don’t drink alcohol and it was in any case mainly catering to Henry’s Down For The Weekend. If you couldn’t order online, or have a car, there was a bus two days a week… I had both but wondered how some neighbours coped.

I have seen better infrastructure in Botswana. Way fewer potholes in the roads for that matter.

[GKH]

Furthermore this is a direct attack on community based organisations and campaigns, quote; “The notions are very different, for a socialist there is no “communal filter” between the individual and the institutions of the state but for a communist the state doesn’t exist without one (the capitalist, of-course, their actions being anathema to community, doesn’t believe in society at all). This exemplifies the veracity of the maxim; “the trouble with “-isms” is that they are full of “-ists”!”” "Arafel": A Dangerous Conflation, Socialism = Communism, Divide and Rule! #Socialism #Communism #Capitalism #Anarchism #Bolshevism #Schumacher #G7Summit #TropesandMemes #CryptoCurrencies #Emergence #Economics #LoS

If individuals are not empowered they cannot form effective communities. The vested interests know this so they are monopolising the financial services industry by-the-back-door in order to ensure control of (as Elon Musk would have it); “the memes of production”, after all that which cannot be said (between people), cannot be! It is a very anti-Schumachian exercise (for it is indeed “anti-social!”).

[KarenEliot]

I must read more EFS. Got a few chapters into Small Is Beautiful and shelved it for later.

[RhisiartGwilym]

Schu was always the business. Good man!

[GKH]

Absolutely…pejoratively (perhaps) a “mixed-economy” man…but when Schumacher suggested same he meant both socialised, communised and capitalised!

[GKH]