Royal Mail criticised for D-Day stamp mix-up

[Not Connard Sage]

Oops

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46694509

 

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Guy Farrish]

Bit of a **** up.

But to be fair the picture was of A D Day (probably).

Just not the one they were commemorating.

(Probably a History Channel researcher).

[Not Connard Sage]

It would have been nice if the ‘researcher’ had trolled British military websites for images.  They may have found more appropriate pictures, of British and Commonwealth soldiers.

Did the Post Office really think no-one would notice?

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Mike]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Did the Post Office really think no-one would notice?

I suspect they did not know it was incorrect, more than they hoped to get away with it.

[Not Connard Sage]

Mike wrote:

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Did the Post Office really think no-one would notice?

I suspect they did not know it was incorrect, more than they hoped to get away with it.

‘That’ll do’ is no excuse.

The GPO used to employ people who vetted this sort of stuff, along with commissioned editors and artists.

Standards are slipping 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Guy Farrish]

To be fair (don’t worry, I’m not going to make a habit of it) I’m not sure I would have noticed at a casual glance, and I do know a bit about it being of the generation that grew up bathing in the cultural aftermath of WWII.

My father volunteered to be one of the chaps who sneaked ashore and took beach samples, bits of obstacle and mines etc (so naturally they sent him to Burma to do something sneaky behind the Japanese lines!) So I heard a lot about it as a child, and it was one of the things that sowed the seed of wargaming.

I suspect most people don’t have a clue, and don’t particularly care.

Doing a quick Google search on D Day reveals many questions such as ‘What was D-Day and why did it matter?’

(and the answers are largely wrong – there were lots of D Days but D Day for Operation Neptune has nabbed the name for itself in virtually everyone’s imagination).

The likelihood of anyone under the age of 35 using a stamp let alone caring about its accuracy is very very small.

(Re GPO – that was when Royal in Royal Mail meant something. Nowadays its a brand and I suspect there is as much loyalty to the Crown as there is to historical accuracy in stamps – depends how much it’s going to cost them).

[Not Connard Sage]

All of which is absolutely correct, but although my own father never did anything particularly remarkable in the war, being one of the next generation myself I find it all a little depressing that no-one cared enough to do even a little basic fact checking. Or even to have asked the IWM if they had any suitable images. Or that ‘tribute’ has been devalued over the commercial realitiy of selling as many first day copies as possible.

My views may have been coloured by post holiday melancholia, and reading this book review.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/24/what-we-have-lost-by-james-hamilton-paterson-the-dismantling-of-great-britain

 

 

 

 

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Guy Farrish]

I read that in the Saturday Review section – so I had pre holiday melancholia.

I agree completely with what you say. But I ‘ve lost my enthusiasm for tilting at windmills I think.

 

[deephorse]

I noticed that the Royal Mail spokeswoman said “We work very hard blah blah blah”, but obviously not hard enough to do a simple Google image search for “D-Day”.  Seeing that news item the other day I did just that and the image they used was not* amongst the results.

*except, of course, that because of the coverage it now is!

Play is what makes life bearable - Michael Rosen

[Cameronian]

Not surprised by it.  There is generally a poor quality of research these days.  Likely younger generations tasked with researching ‘ancient history’ which has little relevance to them or interest for them.  Not a criticism, merely the way of the world.

'The time has come" The walrus said. "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--And whether pigs have wings."

[Author]

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