1641. 🇦🇺 Australia Post’s Philatelic Reputation Is Now Irretrievable.

  🇦🇺 No matter what’s going on in the real world of life and death, Australia Post is determined to continue to issue large numbers of philatelic products and has revealed the vast number of items to be released over the next 2 months. So some things never change.

  The first issue commemorates a notable anniversary and is therefore, in my opinion, highly worthwhile. The subject of the issue is the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage in the Endeavour - an event of great significance in Australian history. The issue takes the form of 10 stamps and an interesting miniature sheet containing all 10 stamps. The issue was designed by Gilimbaa Creative Agency and lithographed by RA Print and perforated 14 x 14.5. Rating:- *****.

  🇨🇨 Issue inscribed Australia Cocos (Keeling) Islands - 12 May 2020 - Booby birds - 3 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all 3 stamps. Designed by Jo Muré and lithographed by EGO and perforated 14.5 x 14. Rating:- ****.

  19 May 2020 - ‘Citizen science’ - 4 gummed stamps and 4 self-adhesive stamps from 4 booklets each containing 10 of a single design. Designed by Martin Mörck and Jo Muré and lithographed by RA and perforated 14 x 14.5. An inconsequential issue. Rating:- *.

🇳🇫 Issue inscribed Australia Norfolk Island - 2 June 2020 - ‘the Norfolk Blue’ cow - 2 stamps and 1 miniature sheet. Rating:- ***.

9 June 2020 - ‘Art of the desert’ - 4 gummed stamps and 1 self-adhesive stamp from a ‘sheetlet’ of 5. Designed by Simone Sakinofsky and lithographed by EGO and perforated 14.5 x 14. Another inconsequential issue. Rating:- *.

16 June 2020 - Mid-20th century fashion - 4 gummed stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all 4 Stamps. Designed by Sally Piskuric and lithographed by EGO and perforated 14.5 x 14. Yet another inconsequential issue. Rating:- *.

And then to the MyStamps stamp packs each sold for $15.50. Rating of each of these:- 0.

‘How to train your dragons’ - 12 self-adhesive stamps.

‘Bluey’ - 12 self-adhesive Stamps.

‘Wonder Woman’ - 12 self-adhesive stamps.

‘Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back’ - $25.50 pack of 2 panes each containing 10 identical ‘Map of Australia’ greetings stamps with attached labels. Rating:- 0.

  If my calculations are correct this little group of items intended to be released over a period of just 2 months adds another 68 stamps and 6 miniature sheets/sheetlets to the number of items Australia Post has issued during 2020. The collecting of the modern stamps of Australia is now as pointless and worthless as collecting the issues of Sierra Leone and Maldives. Australia’s Philatelic reputation is now irretrievable.

Addendum. Reply to comment by Norvic (my Comment section will still not allow me to respond to comments for some reason beyond my understanding) - Thank you, Ian. You are quite right - the issue is indeed made up of 10 stamps - it even says so on the miniature sheet, something I managed to overlook. The stamps are, as you point out, in 5 vertically se-tenant pairs, the pairs having 3 perforations between them rendering them, as you say, inseparable without scissors. Why issue 5 stamps when you can issue 10? I have corrected the above text.

  I would love to know if anyone still has an ‘Australia’ collection to which they add every new stamp still issued by Australia Post and does that include the stamps from the new so-called My Stamps packs.

1640. 🇬🇧 Royal Mail Commemorates World War 2 Peace Celebrations.

🇬🇧 In these difficult times when you could almost say that a Third World War has broken out - this time not against the forces of fascism but against a non-human enemy - Royal Mail has revealed that it will release a joyous set of 8 stamps, 1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps and a 4 pane Prestige booklet costing £19.80p on 8 May 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War.

  The designs do not feature famous people, members of the royal family nor politicians but ordinary British people who had lived through almost 6 years of war - of fear, deprivation, self-denial, of threat of death or injury to the combatants abroad or the civilians at home. And the stamps depict those people including soldiers returned from war and women and children who had lived through night after night of bombing raids, daytime attacks by V2 rockets, severe food rationing and, at one time, fear of invasion, all coming out into the streets to celebrate their release from their 6 year-long  ‘lockdown’. I remember my family members of the previous 2 generations telling me about the sheer relief and joy when the war ended and the celebrations in which people began to rejoice that they had made it safely through the war even though they remembered those people they knew who had not.      My mother and her sisters worked in the famous Birmingham jewellery trade and were given a day off work by their employer, a Jewish man who had fled the Nazi terror when the occupation of the Sudetenland was carried out prior to the main outbreak of war, so that his employees whom he called  “his family” could join the celebrations and then he said, “Oh that’s not enough, take the whole week off!”

  On 8 May 1945 there was no peace for my poor father who at the age of 19 was still at war in Burma. But he made it through to the autumn when the Allies achieved victory in the Far East and was eventually able to come home to his family and to see again the girl that he loved and would marry. Meanwhile my mother’s sister, my aunt, would meet and eventually marry a young Pole, who had also fled the country in which he was born to get to Britain and join the Polish forces here to join the fight against the Nazis and he made his home in England and became a naturalised Briton and would not see the land of his birth again until 1995 - 50 years after the end of World War 2 - when I accompanied him to visit Warsaw and Krakow which is situated close to the crime that we now know as Auschwitz.

  So it is that Royal Mail plans to issue a perfect set of stamps to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of a time of trial for Britain and the world. We hope that our present trial is not a fraction of what the people of the 1940s endured. It is very apt that one of the stamps depicts a group of nurses, who are part of our present frontline,  celebrating the end of the war as we hope that we will see such pictures again in the near future when the Coronavirus has been swept away.

  The issue was designed by Hat-trick Design using photographs colourised by Royston Leonard. The issue was lithographed by International Security Printers and is perforated 14 x 14.5. Rating:- ****** (yes, 6 stars).

1639. 🇦🇺 Australia Commemorates Its ‘Legendary’ Comedians.

  🇦🇺 In Blog 1637 I suggested that Royal Mail might like to reissue its 2015 British comedians set of 10 stamps as a means of cheering everyone up at this difficult time. Now it seems that Australia Post is going to do just that having issued its Australian Legends set on 15 April 2020 on the subject of Australian Comedians who, apparently, are legendary in Australia.

  The 4 stamps were issued in gummed format as well as self-adhesive format from individual booklets of 10 with a separate booklet for each comedian. The issue was designed by Sonia Young and lithographed by EGO (gummed) and Realease S/A (self-adhesive) and perforated 14 x 14.5.

  Well we all need a good laugh right now don’t we?

  Rating:- **.