BEAN COUNTERS MISS THE TRUE 'SOCIAL VALUE'
quite understood how this combination arises. What, after all, have
bunnies got to do with eggs? And what have either of them got to do
with the resurrection?
In any event, Parliament did not go in for eggs or bunnies this year.
Instead, our present was a debate on post office closures.
This debate was made more interesting than usual, at least for
Westminster villagers, by the fact that the motion, though put forward
by the opposition, was virtually identical to one signed just recently
by many MPs on the Government benches.
This prompted a little frisson of doubt. Would enough of them vote
against the Government? Would we end up with a resolution of the House
of Commons, calling for a moratorium on post office closures?
Unsurprisingly, the Government whips did their job. The "rebellion"
was contained to some 20 die-hard rebels, and the motion was defeated.
But, for once, the debate itself was interesting; not least because it
was conducted on all sides with a mixture of passion and decorum.
By the end, it was possible to understand the pattern of thought that
underlies the otherwise mysterious fact that Post Office headquarters
seems determined to eliminate even profitable sub-post offices in
places like west Dorset.
The way I and, I suspect, some readers of this column have always seen
the matter is to comprehend, however much we may regret it, the desire
to restrict the size of the subsidy for rural post offices, but to be
genuinely surprised that headquarters now wants to get rid even of
some profitable sub-offices.
But the debate brought out the reasons why.
It became clear the remit that has been given, management consultant-
style, to the bosses of the post office is not "keep open as much as
you can" but "cut costs as much as you can".
This does not bode well for us in west Dorset. We have plenty of sub-
offices which are or could, with a bit of voluntary help, be made
viable.
But if the aim is to cut costs to the maximum allowed by the access-to-
a-post office rules, then we are in for a succession of cuts over the
years; because, as I have pointed out in this column before, those
rules mean something like 40 of our sub-offices could be removed in
time.
As I came to the realisation this is the mind set we are battling
against, the thought came to me that we are missing something in
British government.
We are missing a kind of accounting that includes not just costs and
revenues but also what one might call "social value".
The expression "he knows the cost of everything and the value of
nothing" is surely relevant here.
The costs of the post office can undoubtedly be reduced by cutting sub-
offices.
For all I know, the profit-maximising potential, or whatever
management consultants call it, of the post office could be reached by
having just three or four branches in the whole of West Dorset.
But something else would be lost, something we can all recognise as
"social value".
When the bean counters are asked to get to work, however efficient
they are at the task, they will inevitably go wrong if they are asked
to count the wrong beans.
So should we instead be developing methods of counting social value
and not just monetary costs?
There is a thought to go with all those mysterious Easter bunnies and
eggs.