2262. 🇱🇸 Lesotho’s First New Issues In 7 Years Feature Tourism & Insects.

 

New issues.

🇱🇸 Postal service of Lesotho -

31 January - Tourism in Lesotho - 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing the single stamp. Designed by Kabelo Maja and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 13. Rating:- ****.

31 January 2023 - Insects and spiders of Lesotho - 1 miniature sheet containing 6 different stamps. Designed by Kabelo Maja and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14. Rating:- ****.

🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Post -

 

26 August 2023 - 150th anniversary of the Great Debate of Panadura - 1 stamp. Lithographed. Rating:- ****.

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

2 October 2023 - The indispensable Norvic Stamp Blog draws our attention to the news that the 1st Class Domestic postage rate will rise from £1.10p to £1.25p because of “increasing cost pressures, the challenging economic environment and the lack of reform of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) despite the significant structural decline in letter volumes”. The 2nd Class rate will remain at 75p and the 1st Large rate will be £1.95p with the 1st Large signed being £3.45p, Special Delivery 100g rising from £6.85p to £7.35p and the 500g rising from £7.75p to £8.15p. 

The 1st Class Domestic rate will therefore be exactly 300 times greater than was the basic penny postage introduced by Rowland Hill in 1840. If postage rates had merely increased by inflation compared with 1840 then the 1d postage rate, designed to make the post accessible to all, would now cost 54.3p so clearly inflation is only a small part of the rise over the decades of the price of sending a letter in Britain, even if one accepted that the 2nd Class rate was the basic postage rate (but deliveries are much slower and less frequent compared with 1840).

31 December 2023 - 

Norvic has also reported that Post and Go stamps will cease at the end of 2023 and machines will be received from post offices. Hence another philatelic era will come to an end. This is a pity since the availability of the machines is a great help when there is a long queue in a post office made up of people who mainly have business to conduct which has nothing to do with sending a letter. One of the reasons given by Royal Mail is “the fact that there have been no new Post and Go issues for several years” - well, if Royal Mail does not issue any new Post and Go stamps it’s hardly surprising there haven’t been any, how banal can these Royal Mail managers be? Royal mail also stated that, “the change of monarch would require new issues to be reintroduced” (if they need some new designs incorporating the King’s Head, I would be happy to oblige - a decent job can be done on an iPad in about five minutes). 

Royal Mail appears to be in a deep hole and the moment is approaching when the government is going to have to take action over its failure to meet its delivery targets. The end could be in sight.