LOOK out for crocodile tears today when the Government announces the closure of up to 3,000 sub post offices across the country.

Industry Secretary Alistair Darling will say there is, sob-sob, no option but to take an axe to the network, because the people have deserted their local branch.

Mr Darling is likely to recycle a stark statistic that the 800 smallest post offices are used by an average of just 16 people a week - with many hundreds more nearly as quiet. Hence, with post offices losing £111m last year, despite a £150m-a-year subsidy from the Government, it is time to help struggling sub post masters to get out.

No one doubts the difficulty of keeping post offices buzzing, when most people prefer to arrange passports and driving licences online and have benefits paid directly into banks. But just how hard have ministers tried to save what everyone agrees are vital community facilities? Nowhere near hard enough, I think.

The biggest body blow to post offices was the shift away from over-the-counter processing of benefits payments, which started more than three years ago. There is strong evidence that many elderly people were bullied into giving up their pension book when ministers launched a telephone campaign to extol the wonders of switching. Since then, post offices have lost the chance to grab money-spinning contracts for TV licences and passports because of the threat that more branches would be axed.

And, according to the Liberal Democrats, it is only rigid Royal Mail rules that prevent sub post offices handling parcels delivered by private courier services, such as Fedex. The astonishing rise of internet shopping could allow post offices to become "parcel depots" for storage, the Lib Dems say.

When, in 2003, customers signed for post office card accounts (POCA), they were never told the accounts would be scrapped from 2010 - a fact revealed only earlier this year. More than 100,000 of the region's pensioners use these cards but, of course, they are mainly poorer, older people who don't make much political noise.

Finally, there is a clear "spinning" exercise going on to convince people that the number of post offices to disappear will not be so terrible after all.

At the weekend, a Labour-friendly newspaper warned in huge headlines that 7,000 were at risk, so that the eventual tally of 2-3,000 will almost be a relief. But don't be fooled. Such a closure programme would still axe around 200 branches in the North-East and North Yorkshire - not far off the 235 culled since 1999.

The long-overdue death of General Pinochet - torturer, murderer, friend of Margaret Thatcher - brings to mind the most spine-chilling event I have attended as a political reporter.

It was a rally, staged in a pitch-black Blackpool cinema during Tory conference week, with the aim of freeing the brutal dictator, then under cushy house arrest in Surrey.

The voice of Lady Thatcher had not been heard much in years, but the ageing former prime minister tottered slowly to the platform to tell us why Pinochet should be allowed home. It was the familiar rubbish - helped us in the Falklands, always gave flowers to his mother, or similar. I've rarely been so ashamed to be British.

But it is the haunting Thatcher voice that sticks in the memory - as well as seeing her later, in the bar, sipping whisky from a pint glass.