The last post ...

That's the Government's approach to ending the obvious inconvenience of having to maintain any semblance of a Post Office service.

Give them credit. It's been a classic of its kind. Bexhill lost Sackville Road sub post office years ago, despite a rearguard battle by its then MP.

Despite protests, it has since lost both Old Town and Pebsham.

Each in its turn was a grave blow to the local communities involved.

Lessons have been well learned over the years. When the Government of the day sought to rid itself of the burden of branch railway lines it hired Lord Beeching as its hit-man.

The Bexhill West to Crowhurst branch was a prime target. First they messed about with the timetable, so making the line less useful to the commuters who depended on it. Then they jacked up the fares.

When usage of the line plummeted as a result Lord Beeching was able to declare that it was one of the multitude of such lines which was no longer "viable."

And he swung the still-remembered "Beeching Axe."

That was four decades ago. But the highly successful technique has not been allowed to rust in the same way as the disused lines.

Hence, we now have the managing director of Post Office Ltd. reluctantly acceding to our MP's repeated request for information about the closure process with the telling statement that his network of sub post offices is "....a product of history rather than design."

That "product of history" has also been the victim of a carefully structured campaign of government dismemberment.

Like the branch lines before it, the Post Office has been systematically and cynically denuded cut-by-cut of its its raison d'etre.

No longer is it possible for old people to queue for their pensions at a neighbourhood sub post office. Nor for their television licences, nor - for those in the fortunate position to be able to afford one - for their car licences.

In any other sphere this would have been classed as criminal damage - vandalism designed fatally to undermine an institution. Bravely, our current MP has set out this week to attempt to stem the tide, quoting examples of previous town David-and-Goliath victories.

We wish him and his fellow campaigners every success. All the evidence from Old Town and from Pebsham points to the cycle of community decline that post office closures trigger.

Bitter experience and a track record which reveals that this moment has been long-planned suggests, however, that the odds have been heavily stacked against such local opposition.