On 08/02/2015 17:55, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 16:09:24 on Sun, 8 Feb 2015,
Mizter T remarked:
the Post Office has decided (unilaterally it sounds like) to withdraw
from the process of issuing and re-issuing Freedom Passes as of the
end of June 2015, which seems like an odd thing to do (given they're a
government owned enterprise

Aren't most Post Offices a franchise? (97% perhaps).

Yes (though the PO use the term 'agency' rather than franchise), but the
point being they're agencies of a publicly owned enterprise - one that
says...

"At Post Office, we aspire to be at the very heart of customers’ choice
by becoming the most trusted provider of essential services to every
person in the land."

http://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/who-we-are

FWIW, the CWU said in 2013 that the 373 (now 369) Crown POs handle 20%
of PO business:
http://www.cwu.org/news/archive/57015/post-office-closure-and-franchise-plan-deeply-unpopular.html