Profiteering

A First Class stamp in the UK costs 85p so 12 cost £10.20 

However, on Amazon they can be bought for the bargain price of:

Or if you really want to push the boat out:

Ironically both sold by the same seller, postage01Solutions.

One excuse they have given is that they post them to you. The Post Office will do that too faster and more cheaply.

Only On Lewis

could you see this:

When I came to live in Lewis in 1975 leaving the beautiful Cheshire village of Lymm and my excellent job in the Manchester satellite of Trafford (and with a membership of the Lancashire County Cricket Club which was right opposite my office), never did I for one moment think that the Outer Hebrides would end up being where not only my body but also my heart would end up. After all I only intended to come for two years.

Back in the 70s no one locked doors or took ignition keys out of cars. Theft of something from a private individual was a rarity. Okay it's true that occasionally sheep went missing from the common grazing and were 'found' in another township. Sometimes a car left in Stornoway's main car park in the town centre would disappear on a Friday or Saturday night when someone needed to get home.  I recall one chap who regularly took a car and parked it outside his house. 

It was an interesting peculiarity of the law that it was very hard to prove the theft of a motor car. Theft involves an intention permanently to deprive someone of something. A person who 'stole' a car would always argue that it would have been returned the next morning. So the only thing actually stolen was a few bobs worth of petrol which was hardly worth a prosecution. Of course all that's changed now and the loophole has been closed.

However theft of personal property is still relatively rare.  Where else could you leave a parcel for collection by the Royal Mail propped up against the township post box?

Snail Mail

I write a lot of letters and send a lot of birthday and Christmas cards. I like the handwritten word. 

I tend to decorate my envelopes too.

One of my oldest and dearest friends died last year. She had moved to Canada when she was in her early 20s and we had corresponded ever since. I have hundreds of letters from her. There are doubtless some emails also buried somewhere in amongst all the other thousands of personal emails I've sent and received over the years. When she died I was asked to do a eulogy. To jog my memory back 50 or so years I started re-reading the letters. Obviously I only scanned most of them but it was a very comforting few days that I spent with them in front of me.

I also have all the correspondence with my Mum (a wonderful letter writer) when I moved to Lewis in the '70s. The letters I wrote were returned to me when she and Dad gave up their home to go and live with my brother. I'd kept all hers so it was good to have the 'whole picture'.

My brother and I communicate frequently by post.

In 2019 I wrote 290 missives ranging from 10 page letters, to 2 page note-cards: mostly the latter. Then there were all the birthday, get-well, sympathy and Christmas cards: probably totalling nearly a couple of hundred.

So I probably buy around 450 to 500 postage stamps a year. Apart from Christmas cards and some birthday cards to people in the UK all my stamps are First Class or abroad - usually New Zealand or USA. 

This country has an excellent postal service provided by the Royal Mail. Mail is delivered 6 days a week to the door of almost every address in the country at a single uniform rate regardless of location. So a letter posted on the Isle of Wight will be delivered First Class to me on the Isle of Lewis 560 miles (900k)  away in a straight line (764 miles by road) usually the next day for the sum of 70p. It costs the same for me to post a letter to Stornoway 7 miles away. I may be wrong but I don't think anywhere else in the world provides such a universal one-price service regardless of price.

One problem facing the royal mail is the fact that the lucrative low cost services are provided in the cities by competitors who only provide services within relatively small lucrative catchment areas eg within central London. This leaves the Royal Mail providing the high cost services at a price they must also charge in the lucrative areas.

On 23 March Royal Mail will increase their prices yet again. A First Class 20g letter will go up from 70p to 76p a rise of over 8%. 

As we send fewer and fewer letters because we use electronic means of communication for personal and business and as prices increase and contribute to the declining use my question is simply "How much longer will we have a universal letter postal service." If we don't use it we'll lose it.

Post Office Discrimination

Notice anything about this screenshot of the Post Office website? I'll give you a clue. I, and thousands more, do not live on the UK mainland.

I use a lot of postage stamps.

I've never counted but my brother and I between us probably use several hundred first class stamps just sending missives to each other. We use WhatsApp and emails but we both like writing letters and sending cards.

Then there are my friends overseas who don't use computers and those to whom I like sending cards anyway. I certainly use several dozen overseas stamps a month.

I love sending cards (I print my own photo cards). I love writing letters! It's as simple as that.

I've never ordered stamps on line because I prefer to support my local post offices however CJ pointed out that there were really interesting stamps to be had directly from the Post Office on line. So I sussed out some interesting ones and then came the bad news. I can't have them delivered to the Isle of Lewis.

Given that the cost of postage for the order would be exactly the same for Lewis as anywhere else in the UK this totally defeats me. There will be a letter going to my MP on this one.

PS Why is there an apostrophe after 'address' in the information box?