Last updated 19:36, Thursday, 20 March 2008

IRIS Whiting’s life is set to change radically. A gently socialising country village existence is about to be traded for one of isolation and hardship.

Iris is 75 and – with good reason – wants to know why she and others like her have been rudely forgotten.

It may seem like a pertinent question but actually it’s the wrong one.

Iris and thousands of other rural dwellers have not been forgotten in the decision to close post offices.

They have been dismissed.

They’ve been discarded as irrelevant to a profit driven, youth-cultured obsession with cold efficiency writing people out of real life’s equation.

The clear message of what now matters to a once proud public service and what passes these days as a Labour Government has been delivered.

To figure on their radar screens of public need you must be young, equipped with an internet-enabled home computer, have the know-how – and eyesight – to conduct home economics online or drive a car to your nearest branch... which in Iris’s case is 12 miles away, over the border in Scotland.

On Tuesday, Post Office chiefs published their list of 35 Cumbrian branches to be closed to save a weekly cost of £4 million.

On Wednesday the Government rubber-stamped it.

Carlisle’s MP Eric Martlew always promised to support the campaign to rescue threatened branches – so often the very hearts of their communities.

He kept his word and voted against his party. But though he was joined by 18 other rebels, it wasn’t enough.

This has been a shameful week of blatant dismissal of the most vulnerable.

Deaf ears have been turned to heartfelt pleas for help in maintaining community networks of self-help and social viability.

Those who will suffer most keenly will be the elderly.

The Post Office and Government knew that. They didn’t forget – they simply didn’t care.