From the typical Conservative viewpoint this makes no sense.

“The state provision needs to be better or this needs to stay illegal”

So if the state can’t provide a service, neither can the private sector.

Extend that logic and Streeting is a hardcore socialist.

He’s not voting with any of his stated principles, which is proof he has none.

She read Ayn Rand, Hayek simplified by tax cut lobbists and no conflicting positions.

Most of what she did was wrong and people knew at the time. But she fooled enough voters like Regan.

“On 31 December 2009, rather than being fully privatised, the mint ceased to be an executive agency and its assets were vested in a limited company, Royal Mint Ltd. The owner of the new company became The Royal Mint trading fund, which itself continued to be owned by HM Treasury. As its sole shareholder, the mint pays an annual dividend of £4 million to the Treasury, with the remaining profits being reinvested into the mint.[58] In 2015, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a £20 billion privatisation drive to raise funds, with the Royal Mint being up for sale alongside other institutions including the Met Office and Companies House.[55]”

“Then in 2016, the mint announced plans for Royal Mint Gold (RMG), a digital gold currency that uses blockchain to trade and invest in gold. Operated by CME Group, the technology is to be[out of date?] created by technology companies AlphaPoint and BitGo.[69]”

Bring it back into public ownership. It’s been partially privatised and the vultures are extracting what they can.

It’s not completely nonsensical for the government to lose a small margy on making currency. It’s useful and the harder it is to counterfeit the better.

But both “New Labour” and the Conservatives have a lot to answer for when it comes to our national assets being lost.

It would also negate the point of the legislation that means they have to accept stamps in the first place.

You should not have to visit a post office in person or online to post a letter.

There are letter boxes in walking distance. If you’ve bought a book of stamps everything you need is in your desk.

That’s the system we have and it would never be designed by a business that way. But it’s a business that’s taken on that system alongside the I infrastructure for it.

If you genuinely depend on the post accessibility to it is important. It could be modernised but it was working before, modernisation and cost saving are not the same thing.

Stamps no longer have a face value. They are 1st or second class.

As they put up the price each year it’s becoming common to buy stamps before the price rise and sell them after.

The margin on the last rise was ~13% on 2nd class stamps, 8% on first class stamps.

13% has been roughly the average every year since 2005.

So you can absolutely buy stamps at less than “face value”. Someone who bought them 4 years ago could easily give you a 20% discount and still make a profit.

As stamps are not allowed to expire (or have to be replaced if they do) this is a safe investment.

Royal mail have encouraged this to inflate sales in the short term and are suffering from those valid stamps still being available now with no further revenue.

Taking the face value off stamps is what’s caused this problem.

There was never an investment opportunity in buying a 90p stamp that was still worth 90p postage years later.

But buying 1000 2nd class stamps that are always worth 2nd class postage has been an inflation beating purchase.

Or they go close to bust and get renationalised.

If Labour are smart about it they’ll keep the USO in place and when it’s shown the business isn’t profitable take the assets back into public hands at a reasonable price.

The key problem with the new stamps is there’s no way for someone to check the validity themselves.

It’s also just a barcode, so a fake stamp that gets used with that barcode first doesn’t get stopped and the legitimate one does.

There have definitely been some batches where the barcodes have leaked.

I’m sorry, I started joking because you weren’t being serious either.

Wait, you were being serious?

Well I’ve got a solution for you!

Just insert this adapter into the 3.5mm jack and it will be blocked for you. It’ll no longer be wasted space because this adapter is a useful place to store several grains of rice for a snack.

Unfortunately you do lose a feature as a result of using this adapter, it will stop one of the speakers from working and degrade your audio quality.

But you shouldn’t complain about anything removing a feature, or degrading your audio quality. You’ve got a new feature of being able to store rice!

You can even buy special fairphone sustainable rice from us. With only a small 300% mark up but an incredible 80% of the sustainability of already available rice. It comes in green!

The “demographic” of human being who doesn’t want to wreck the planet if Fairphone’s target.

If Fairphone is not trying to be universal anymore you should see that as a problem. So should every fairphone customer.

I’ll buy a more sustainable phone than the fairphone when my phone loses support in 2027. I’ll encourage everyone to buy a more sustainable product today.

I’d much prefer a 3.5mm jack

Welcome to UK politics…