New Zealand Honours The Vietcong But Do They Know It?

The New Zealand Post Office has recently put on sale collections of the personalised stamps which were produced in 2010 and 2011 and presented them as large blocks of setenant designs, some self-adhesive and some gummed and one or two designs in booklets. All very confusing and making available to the general public designs which were previously personal to the individuals who had paid to have these stamps produced using their private pictures and illustrations. However, the stamps are of great interest to philatelists and questionably should be included in catalogues since the stamps have now become "freely available to the general public". However the New Zealand Post Office may have bitten off more than it can chew since one of the designs (illustrated above) appears to honour the Viet Cong against whom New Zealand fought a war from June 1964 to December 1972. It appears to me that the little old man on the design is actually Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the North Vietnamese, who brought an ignominious defeat on the Americans along with their allies which included the New Zealanders. Does New Zealand Post really think this is a suitable subject for stamps now put on sale to the public? Is this stamp an example of reconciliation? I suspect not. I think that this may be an embarrassment to New Zealand Post Office. I recommend buying these personalised stamps for their sheer interest value especially the Viet Cong design. I wonder if they will leave the design on sale when they realise that someone has pulled a fast one in getting them to produce the stamp. I will illustrate some of the less controversial designs in my next blog.