Dear LPG, 

I am old and I am also old fashioned I suppose.  I did try to up my game quite a few times over the years, but I have always been much better at sending letters than sending emails. I still regularly buy envelopes and stamps and give my local post box a reason to exist.  

I must admit to a little cheating though because while I am still finding my way around a lot of what a computer has to offer, using it as a typewriter is where my computer skills are strongest.  

Because of my letter writing habits I often make a detour to what is left of the post office to buy stamps.  I remember when stamps cost less than a shilling, and we thought that they were expensive then.  Each year just before the budget I, like so many others would stock up on stamps before the price went up on budget day, and then we would watch as we saw how much cheaper we would be able to keep sending letters for, as long as we took class into consideration. 

I still write and that means that I still regularly pop off to the post office for a supply of those little gummed squares.  But things changed even more radically than I thought they could when I went for my latest supply.

I have been using 2nd class for some time now because most of the letters I write don’t need to be there the next day, but even those have become more expensive every Spring and at nearly £9.00 per book of 12, I was preparing to part with the best part of £10.00 after this year’s tariff rise.  So, you can imagine my surprise when I was charged only £5.44 one-day last week.  I was still looking for the money when the person the other side of the counter said the price and I was a little surprised until I looked up to see the green book with only 8 stamps being offered to me.  

Postage stamps are going through radical changes.  They are now cheaper because you only get 2/3rds of the amount in the book.  Then there are the new colours and sizes of the stamps which will take a bit of getting used to.  The red 1st class ones have gone purple while the blue 2nd class ones have gone green. They have also gone digital with their QR type codes on the side, and it is all to do with security according to what I read on the internet.

There is one more thing to take into consideration.  It was always a good idea to get the ones marked 1st class and 2nd class rather than those with the monetary value printed on the front, but they are about to be phased out too.  Unlike in the past, when the old ones were still valid after the big Spring changeover.  The stamps which show their class are to become unusable after March 1st, 2023, so, letter writers of the UK, prioritise and get your classy stamps stuck on and away first!

TG, Lee.

TG found us some information…

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