Britain's largest organisation of older people, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), has today called on the government, in advance of an announcement later this week, to award the new Post Office Card Account (POCA) contract to Post Office Limited (POL), in order prevent any further local branch closures.

Did you know that 4,500 Royal Mail people are trained first aiders or first responders equipped with defibrillators? Or that postmen and women raised over £500,000 last year for charity?

A new campaign has been started to get Royal Mail to reinstate the Sunday collections country wide from mail boxes that were stopped on 28th October 2007. Read on to find out how YOU could help to support this campaign.

Organisations campaigning to stop the cull of Post Offices - including The Countryside Alliance (CA) and the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) - have condemned the closures and are urging people to "save their Post Office" by making their views known under the official six week consultation period.

Mature Times readers who dislike Direct Debit or who prefer to pay their bills by cash or cheque, will be pleased to learn that the Post Office Ltd and British Gas have signed a new deal running to the end of December 2010, which allows British Gas customers to pay for their quarterly bills by cash, cheque or debit card at any of the UK’s 14,000 Post Office branches.

Trade Secretary Alistair Darling has announced plans to close 2,500 more Post Offices by 2009 – a fifth of those remaining - saying that the current loss-making network was "unsustainable".

I think that the government's latest offer, to renew car tax discs "online" is just another underhand way to get more reasons to close more Post Offices.