๐ผ๐ธ Following a very successful royal visit to Australia where he was welcomed by enthusiastic crowds, although insulted on one occasion by an Aborigine senator, King Charles III has now arrived with Queen Camilla in Samoa to pay a state visit and fulfill his role as Head of The Commonwealth and attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) in Apia. This meeting has the theme, “One resilient common future: transforming our Common Wealth”.
The meeting will be attended by representatives of the 56 member states of The Commonwealth but it is worth noting that many countries now view the organisation as being of trivial importance, which it probably is, as notable heads of government such as those of India and South Africa have chosen to attend a meeting of the BRICs nations held by the Russian dictator, Putin, in Kazan in Russia rather than board planes to head for the distant Pacific to attend a minor event in Samoa.
The history of the various CHOGMs and stamp issues related to them have previously been covered in Blogs 2531, 2207, 2103, 2101, 1689, and 1209. The Samoan postal service has not released any postage stamps other than scarce and expensive surcharges since 30 December 2016 and it seems unlikely that it will release any commemorative stamps related to CHOGM though for a small country a visit by all these heads of government or their deputies could be considered to be a significant event worthy of philatelic recognition.
The Commonwealth, now in its 75th tired year, is rather like postage stamps - both are of little or no relevance to this present world and the people who live in it - but as both move through their twilight years, for the present at least I will continue to cover news about them in this Blog.
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| King Charles & the Samoan prime minister, Fiamฤ Naomi Mata’afa |
As a resident of Australia, it was wonderful to see King Charles and Queen Camilla visit us. With the changing world, I guess both postage stamps and The Commonwealth will go through more changes. I just have to look at my own stamp collection to see the vast difference in stamp issues from Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation or Silver Jubilee to the small issue for King Charles III Coronation.
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WK replying - Thank you. It is marvellous how stamps provide us with a record of a changing world. Looking at a collection built up over decades brings back many forgotten memories of a changed world. They are little pieces of history.
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