OT - old stamps for new?

[NY]

The most bizarre mis-direction of mail that we received was a Christmas card addressed to our house number/name but a different town, with the correct postcode for that town. Somehow the postcode and town had been disregarded and the letter had been wrongly routed to a house/street in a completely different part of the country which happened to match the address on the envelope.

It's the equivalent of a letter for

5 Any Street York YOxx yyy

being delivered to

5 Any Street Bristol BSxx yyy

I suppose if it had been posted locally to us, it may have got unofficially "pre-sorted" at some stage so that someone with local knowledge said "I know where there's an Any Street near here", with the town and postcode being ignored.

We have to be very careful when giving our present address because there is a road of the same name as ours in the nearest town, a few miles away, and that town is part of the official Royal Mail address that is given if you do a back-conversion from postcode to address. So we always make sure when filling in the address online that our village name is prominent, manually tweaking the address if necessary after it's been expanded from the postcode. It's the difference between official Royal Mail addresses:

5 Any Street Village Town YOxx xxx

and

5 Any Street Town YOyy yyy

[gareth evans]

Don't forget ...

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the old man's hat. If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do. If you haven't got a ha'penny then ...

<Clean version> ... God bless you! <Rude version> ... F off!

[Colin Bignell]

Even after decimalisation (note the p) when any value less than a pound was measured in pence?

[Colin Bignell]

When has grammar ever had anything to do with popular usage?

[Mark Carver]

I've heard it reported on the media etc, but a quick and dirty Google still takes you to a Royal Mail page tat quotes Jan 31

It's all typical GPO/BT/Royal Mail/Post Office dogmatism. They deserve to go out of business (they're certainly going the right way about it) they are so backward with their thinking.

I can understand they'd be reluctant if you turned up at your local post office with a A0 sized sheet of First Class stamps, because of concerns about counterfeiting or fraud, but FFS if you turn up with two of three

6x or 12x books, are they really likely to be fakes, and so what if 0.001% of them actually are.

WTF can't you just take a small qty (<20 or 30) stamps to a Post Office and simply have then swapped. Far less expensive admin and overhead for all.

[Mark Carver]

I only remember that date, because Michael Barrett on that evening's 'Nationwide' referred to the day as 'Valentines Day +1'

[Martin Brown]

Most likely people who don't know the round then.

They had a road name - luxury. I don't have one!!!

I do have a house name but there is one with the same name in every small village round here. We once got someone else's oil delivery!

I alternate between "No street name" and "Main Street" depending on which way the wind is blowing when compelled to give one online.

[Andrew]

Real people only handled pony's and monkey's

Only their staff fiddled with loose change :-)

[alan_m]

I seem to remember an advertising campaign where they said it should be called "new pence"

[Andrew]

Because when the big increase in postage occurred a while ago some people stocked up on large quantities of stamps, plus I suspect that there are a lot of fake stamps now thanks to the internet and China.

[Mark Carver]

From anecdotal evidence, I suggest it's makes no difference in the current state of RM whether which class you use. I've had 2nd class stuff appear 'next day', and first class stuff that's taken 10 days.

At present I only send 2nd class.

[Tim Streater]

Tuppence in my day, as was the Dandy. The Eagle was fourpence, and most other comics thruppence. And with a farthing you could buy one small marble.

[Clive Arthur]

<snip decimalisation talk>

For some reason, I've never been able to get the jingle out of my head. It was featured in the UK news as an example of how the Ozzies were handling decimalisation before we did it. It was to the tune of "Twll Bach y Clo" known here as "The shepherd and his dog" and in Oz as "Click go the shears".

Anyway, the last line was "On the fourteenth of February 1966".

[Colin Bignell]

Exactly. When the memory of the old money was fresh in everybody's minds, such a distinction was necessary, particularly as many things in the shops were still being priced in both systems.

I think that developed with time, probably from that being the way it was shown in price tags.

Joey for 3d piece.

Half a crown was not strictly a nickname, but a description of the value, as a crown was the name for a coin worth 5/-, mostly struck in small numbers as Christmas gifts or as commemorative coins after the

19th century. The nickname for 2/6 was half a dollar.

The new coins haven't been around long enough yet, although the 50p coin was sometimes called a ten bob bit when it was first introduced in 1969.

[Colin Bignell]

The 5p and 10p coins were the first issued, three years before decimalisation. Being the equivalent of the shilling and the florin, they were easy to put into circulation early. The 50p piece was introduce as a replacement for the ten bob note in 1969.

[The Natural Philosopher]

tuppeny rhymes with thrupenny

I guess it 'were where you parents were brought up'.

Decimal currency was imposed on us in a desperate attempt to be 'more European' and make life easier for computers. It ended up doing neither, really. It never felt like 'our' currency. Pence shillings dollars guineas groats farthings and all the rest had history and value, and evolution. Modern decimal currency mirrored the abandonment of the gold standard and the debasing of every currency in the world with fiat currencies.

[Theo]

Because the PO is a separate company (owned by the government) and RM is a private company. RM would have to pay PO for that service, and RM reckon they have a perfectly good delivery network that can handle it without paying a third party.

If you think this is silly, blame the government who privatised RM.

Theo

[The Natural Philosopher]

with a farthing you could buy three sugar shrimps I think

[The Natural Philosopher]

Value may have been measured in *new pence*, but adjectives were not.

I would say it was a four pee stamp. a pee is not a penny enny more....:-)

I never heard anyone refer to the new coinage as 'pence' only 'pee', which sums it up really.

At the time that differentiated the shiny new shit from the old coinage. It got to be a habit.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. It was referred to as new pence because it was worth 2.4 old pence

Then it became 'pee'