It’s great to see the petrol retailing community getting a few campaigns together and defending their territory. It’s about time. First off – the Garagewatch campaign to encourage more post offices to be sited on forecourts, rather than lose them forever.

Everyone loves their local post office – whether it’s popping in to buy stamps, do money/foreign currency things, ask questions about passports and driving licences, or post letters and awkward parcels. Anyway it’s much better going to your local post office than going to the centre of town and waiting for hours in a huge queue of morose-looking people who’ve probably had to take a day off to get their Christmas stamps. It may not be an earth-shattering business in terms of profit, but the extra traffic it creates and built-in endearment to the locals must be priceless, particularly for rural locations.

We’ve also got the new Car Wash Campaign Group (see page 12), which was launched last month and wants to provide a collective voice for the car wash industry. We all remember those pictures of a determined-looking David Charman standing by his bore-hole. Now, as chairman, he is the driving force behind the new group and deserves your support.

Then there’s Tony Boorman who rang the Daily Express to give him a piece of his mind. Good on him!

Meanwhile I hope you’ve all got your entries in for the Forecourt Trader awards – judging starts later this month...