Thanet Life reports that Mr Ladyman has put one more nail in the coffin for our poor old post offices.

Laura Sandys writes to tell us that "Stephen Ladyman voted against the Conservative motion to save post offices in Parliament last week. South Thanet has already lost 7 post offices in the last ten years and could face 3 more closures in the next year. It is both urban and rural post offices that are at risk."

Politics And The InternetBy M6.Net Web HostingAccording to a recent poll conducted by ComputerWorld, about forty percent of the population believes that people can increase their political power by going online. Hence, many academics believe that people in western societies are becoming more technologically educated in order to gain more influence in the political sector. For example, Mr. Jeffrey Cole, a director at the University of Southern California states, “This year, 6% of regular Internet users said they have their own blogs, 16% said they post pictures on the Web, and more than 10% maintain their own web sites. In 2003, 3% of Internet users said they blogged, 11% posted photos, and less than 9% maintained web sites.”(ComputerWorld, 2005: 1) Thus, the question raised by many is, “Is the Internet providing a more democratic and participatory human society for the future?”

A paper (entitled "Public sector accountability and commercial-in-confidence outsourcing contracts") in this months' Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal goes quite some way to shedding light on why groups like Thanet Council are so pathetic. Examining "commercial-in-confidence excuse so beloved of British politicians."

"The requirement to make all contracts over a low threshold open for public inspection has largely cleaned up Australian Government outsourcing," Professor Allan Barton, of the Australian National University in Canberra told The Register.

"However, some problems remain at the State Government level, particularly in PPP [Public-Private Partnership] contracts. I believe there are many similar problems with PPPs in the UK," he added.