The Christmas ads now on the telly, I thought I would try to beat some of the Post Office queues by buying my Christmas stamps early.

However, my complacent smugness at being served directly was soon dispelled when the Post Office assistant told me the price of my purchase.  Thirty-two first class letter stamps… go on, take a guess; how much do you think?

“£52.80.”

Good guess.  You clearly already knew that first class postage is £1.65.  To me it came as news.  Even the cashier looked surprised when he rang up the amount.

“People aren’t sending letters anymore,” he said.

I’m not surprised, when it costs £1.65 a time.

Wind back two years.  Christmas 2022.  The price of a first class Christmas stamp was 95p.  It has undergone a 74% price rise in two years.  Even allowing for the effects of a madcap Liz Truss mini-budget, this is a huge rate of inflation.

It is widely publicised that Royal Mail is making losses.  However, simply raising prices is not a sustainable model for recovery.  Ultimately, it merely leads to a spiral of self-destruction.

Royal Mail would be better served by trying to promote a new era of letter-writing.  Start a publicity campaign.  People like to receive letters through the post; enjoy getting postcards; gain pleasure from physical Christmas cards.

Some of my friends have stopped sending Christmas cards purely because the postage costs are so exorbitant.  Instead, they give the money they save to charity.  Admirable, but also a shame, too.  Personally, I don’t want the savings made on me not receiving a Christmas card to go to charity; I want my Christmas card!  I want the Post Office to put a stamp on that card.  And I want the cost of that stamp to be not so dear that anyone should have to think twice about the price of it.

Royal Mail should be as integral a part of spreading Christmas cheer as Dasher and Dancer, and as Donner and Blitzen.

Currently, though, the only Christmas image they conjure up for me is Scrooge.  Bah, Humbug!

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree tries to get in the Christmas spirit.