Please help save the British Forces Post Office

*Outrage Alert*

Friends and family know that when I occasionally find something that makes me very cross, I talk about it and try to do something positive and proactive. They would also tell you that sometimes I find things that make me so angry, I am akin to a cartoon character, red in the face and blowing scalding steam from my ears.

This is one of those occasions.

The Government and Civil Servants, sitting safe and secure in Whitehall, with Protection Officers, Security Guards, and specially armoured cars, have decided in their infinite wisdom to cut the BFPO services.

So what you say? Well.....let me tell you what.....

The British Forces Post Office is a life line for members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces serving abroad and at sea, and for their families. This is the means by which people at home can send letters and parcels to their families stationed abroad, and vice versa.

My father served with the Royal Navy in our Mediterranean Fleet. I still have most of the postcards he sent me as a child from all the places he visited. Without the BFPO service, instead of the regular postcards, I would have heard little from him except in letters he sent my mother, and maybe an occasional card for me. Without the BFPO service, he would never have been able to afford to send the cards he did - and that is no exaggeration!

Before I married, my now husband was serving in Germany. Being able to write to him at a rate I could afford, meant many letters back and forth. We were able to send parcels for birthdays and Christmas, and at odd points in between. When we married we were posted to Cyprus. I had my first baby there and I cannot, just cannot, emphasis how vital the BFPO service was to us.

Be it Europe or the other side of the world, even just the ordinary everyday letters from home mean more than I can express here, and it all arrives safe and secure.

That's the other important part - the BFPO service not just affordable, it is is SAFE and SECURE, not open to access by anyone who means us harm. Would you really want to send a parcel to a military family through the normal postal services of other European countries?

'They' are proposing to cut the European service. Why? Saving money. What a morally bankrupt act from a group of people who are supposed to be serving the nation, not themselves.

You may dispise war; you may disagree with what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq; but servicemen and women go where they are told - don't punish them for the decisions of Government. PLEASE, sign the petition at the link below, and don't forget, when you have signed the petition you need to check your email and confirm your signature by clicking on the link they send - otherwise it won't count.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveBFPO/

Thank you.