So what's the problem? Our lot have already decided that an envelope that is thicker than a certain number of mm is to cost more than a thinner one but they've added the strange rule that a single sheet of paper in an A4 flat envelope will cost more than the same sheet folded in half and put in a smaller envelope. That does defy logic: the weight is almost exactly the same, and below the maximum for the lightest letter, and nobody could reasonably claim that a flat A4 cannot be read by the machines as readily as a flat smaller one. The Royal Mail handles hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of such letters every day and has never said that they are difficult to handle.They are in a standard, internationally agreed, format which is used every day by businesses of all types.
BTW, the US postal service has finally discovered the "forever" stamp
What was the objection to that? (Have you got around to self-adhesive stamps yet ?
) Britain's postal service cannot be smug about either. We've had both the forever stamps and the self-adhesive for years but we still haven't matched France.France is decades ahead of us. In France there are always little weighing machines in the post office . You put your letter or packet on,click for the destination (inland/Europe/ beyond ) and the machine shows the postage, accepts your money , gives change and issues the adhesive label which is the 'stamp'.In Britain, if you are lucky, you can find a machine to weigh the letter but never any chart to show what the postal rates are so you have to join the queue at the counter to have the transaction performed.
Of course, the real advantage of the French system is that it avoids your having to deal with the French bureaucrats who, allegedly, are there to serve you at the counter.Service is not a concept understood by most French public servants, but inventing excuses and creating their own, new,hitherto unknown rules out of thin air for not providing anything as 'Anglo-Saxon' as service most certainly is
It's no wonder that French was so long the language of diplomacy and French people such natural diplomats: they've had lifelong training in the art of negotiating anything and everything with stubborn, immovable, awkward, government representatives, starting with their own
