Movember kicks off November Slogan Postmarks

The first slogan used in November seems to be for the annual Movember campaign to highlight and raise funds to fight men's cancer.

First reports were of difficult-to-read slogans, but thanks to Geoff (GBCC) on Stampboards I can show this fine example from Gatwick Mail Centre used on 1 November.

 STOP MEN DYING

TOO YOUNG.

DO SOMETHING
GOOD

MOVEMBER.COM

UPDATE: Thanks to a couple of readers who sent in the other version, which has no 'Delivered by' segment, but a Movember logo, here from Home Counties North on 2 November (the image has been digitally modified as it was very pale)

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Hastings Pier
Several people have sent examples of this slogan from Mount Pleasant, Jubilee and Home Counties North Mail Centres, though some are almost unreadable.  JG tells us that the result of the RIBA Stirling Prize competition was announced on 31 October, but this slogan appears to have been used only on 6 November (ahead of the Christmas slogans - see below). (Thanks also to AB, GW & RW)

Congratulations

Hastings Pier - 

Winner of the 

RIBA Stirling

Prize 2017

UPDATE:
The reversed version of the slogan applied to the side of a square envelope, from North & West Yorkshire Mail Centre.

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CHRISTMAS STAMP SLOGANS
As you know, two of this year's Christmas stamp designs were selected from schools competition entries.  According to Royal Mail's Press Release this will be marked in a special slogan postmark on mail arriving this week.

"In addition, to mark their success, a special postmark will feature on mail delivered to addresses nationwide. Each child will have their name on the postmark for a week in November with the message: “Ted Lewis-Clark/Arwen Wilson – Winner of Royal Mail’s Christmas Stamp Design Competition.” Ted and Arwen’s postmarks will feature on mail delivered from 7 November and 14 November, respectively. "

UPDATE 8 November.
Our post this morning brought two examples of the Ted Lewis-Clark slogan, from North & West Yorkshire, and from South East Anglia as shown below.  Both are dated 7 November.

Ted Lewis-Clark

Winner of

Royal Mail's

Christmas Stamp

Design Competition

UPDATE:
And another version of this slogan, from Jubilee Mail Centre on 8 November.  Note the different layout of the slogan itself over 4 lines instead of 5:

Ted Lewis-Clark

Winner of Royal Mail's

Christmas Stamp

Design Competition

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UPDATE 15 November:
The annual Remembrance slogan was used nationwide - however the only examples we have seen are both 2nd class from Peterborough Mail Centre, one on 9th and one on 10th November.

UPDATE 15 December
For the record, I should add here that Northern Ireland MC used Lest we forget on 13 December as well!

After that, World Diabetes Day (14th) was marked in a continuation of Royal Mail's health slogans.  One could build up an interesting thematic collection of slogans related to health!  This one is from Warrington Mail Centre on 13-11-2017.

Our right to

a healthy future

World Diabetes Day

14 November

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UPDATE 18 November
The second Christmas Competition slogan has been in use this week and one arrived in the post this morning.  This is the 4-line version from Glasgow MC on 16 November.  [Thanks also to AB for one from Warrington, also 4-line, on 14th.)  The fact that Arwen's was announced as being from 14th suggests that Royal Mail operations already knew that they would run Diabetes Day on 13th, but they declined to make this public.  It's not rocket science to make the announcement: if nothing else social media would do.

Arwen Wilson

Winner of Royal Mail's

Christmas Stamp

Design Competition

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UPDATE 21 November:
As was to be expected, Royal Mail marked the Platinum Wedding Anniversary of HM The Queen and HRH Prince Philip with a special slogan postmark.  Making no reference to the stamps, it would have been quite possible to obtain a first day cover with this postmark which is unlikely to have been used on Friday and Saturday for delivery on Monday 20th.

Her Majesty

the Queen's

Platinum Wedding

Anniversary

20 November 2017

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UPDATE 29 November:
The centenary of the establishment of the Women's Royal Naval Service has been marked by a slogan used on 28 November (example here from Norwich mail centre)

Celebration of the formation

of the

Women's Royal

Naval Service

29 November 1917

UPDATE: Here's a poor example of the other format which is, I think, from North West Midlands!  Could do better, I think!  (Thanks MM)

As usual, your contributions of examples of this and other November slogans are welcomed and will be shown here.

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Christmas comes (very) early in West Yorkshire

Regular readers will recall that this year's Christmas issue will include not only the regular 8 values with a religious theme, but also stamps designed by the winners of this year's design competition for children.

All these stamps will be issued on 7 November, the competition winners being in both standard and Large Letter stamps.

But one reader has sent this picture today, showing the 1st class stamp issued already and posted in West Yorkshire.

Now we know that Christmas stamps used to be issued earlier, and that the surface last posting dates for international mail are approaching very soon, but this is exceptional.

And it's very easy for many special stamp issues to be sold early, despite the selling date in the margin (not usually present on Christmas stamps), but surely anybody with a hap'orth of sense would know that mid-September is far too early to sell Christmas stamps?!

Perhaps its the fault of the greetings card companies, who have already filled the supermarkets and other shops with cards before some people have had their summer holidays; if the cards are on sale is it not unreasonable to sell the stamps?  [It is, of course, but some people just don't think!]

UPDATE 10 October
Two interesting developments.  (1) the stamp shown above was not bought in a post office in Yorkshire.  The sender confirms that it was bought from an eBay seller of cheap postage - which still begs the question....
And (2) Post Office Ltd, in an article about the Swindon Distribution Centre says that "The first delivery of Christmas stamps was made on 25 September and the last will arrive in branches on 24 October".
Which begs an even bigger question if the stamps had not even been sent to branches when this article was first written!

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New stamp designs released: Classic Toys and Christmas Competition Winners

Our website has been updated with details of the Classic Toys set of 10 x 1st class stamps to be issued on 22 August.

The set features some well-known and some not so well-remembered playthings: The Merrythought Bear. Sindy Doll, Spirograph, Stickle Bricks, Wm Britain Toy Figures, Space Hopper, Fuzzy-Felt, Meccano, Action Man, Hornby Dublo Trains.

Meccano and Hornby Trains also featured on the Classic Transport Toys set issued in September 2003.

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Royal Mail have announced the winners of this year's Christmas Stamp Design Competition for children aged 4-11.   I had some misgivings about what would be presented and chosen, based on some designs by younger children in the past, compared with the 22p from 1981 which rivalled designs produced by professional designers.

But I quite like the winners this year, and feel that the judges have chosen well.  HRH The Prince of Wales chose the two winners from the regional shortlists.

The designs, ‘Santa Claus on his sleigh on a starry night’ by Ted Lewis-Clark, aged 10, and a pupil at Oakfield Academy in Frome, Somerset, and ‘Snow family’ by 9-year old Arwen Wilson, who goes to St Chad's Catholic Primary School in Dudley, West Midlands, were chosen from more than 200,000 entries. 

Ted’s ‘Santa’ design will appear on the 1st Class Christmas Stamp and ‘Snow family’ by Arwen will feature on the 2nd Class Christmas stamp.  The stamps will be issued on 7 November 2017.

As usual other Christmas stamps for different postal rates, and a religious-themed issue, will also be available.

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A picture of the Canada 150 Commemorative Sheet has now been added to the original post.

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Slogan postmarks for May 2017

After the rush of postmarks during March and April there have been very few special slogans during May and most offices are using a Postcode slogan or in some cases the Stroke Support slogan.

Mental Health.
A couple of weeks ago I received a letter from a customer which had a new slogan, but we have had very few reports of this.  All are from the same type of machine:

Royal Mail
supports
Mental Health
Awareness Week
#mhaw17
here from Plymouth and Cornwall MC 08.05.17

also seen from South East Anglia on 11.05.17, but from Sheffield on 10.05.17 without the Royal Mail logo.  (This one from the Stampboards forum.)

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Christmas Stamp Design Competition
As I reported earlier this year's Christmas stamp issue will once again include a pair of stamps designed by schoolchildren.  Back in 2013 each of the winners was separately identified by their personalised postmark, but this year there is only one.  The first one reported is fromthe ILSM at Romford Mail Centre 19.05.17 but not very clear.  A better one from Southampton MC is on 20.05.17.  (Thanks to JG and RS for the images.)

Congratulations to the

24 Finalists of

Royal Mail's 2017

Christmas Stamp

Design Competition

Thanks again to JG for this one from the Peterborough MC iLSM machine 20-05-2017

Another version on the Jubilee iLSM has a similar layout to that on the IMPs

Update 31 May: RW has sent this image of the reversed-format slogan from a square envelope:

I was looking for a full list of the finalists, but all I can find is a list of local finalists 5 for each of the 24 regions.  If you search Google news, you can see some of the designs.


UPDATE 28 May
A customer in Glasgow told us of a report in a local newspaper about a special postmark marking

East Kilbride

70 years of 

Scotland's first

new town

although he wasn't able to get a copy locally.  MG provided this scan, confirming that the postmark was used nationwide but only on mail addressed TO the area, as shown here from Lancashire and South Lakes on 05.05.17

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RS reports late use of the National Stationery Week slogan (remember, that was 24-30 April), used in Bristol Mail Centre on 15.05.17

UPDATE 26 MAY
It seems that Royal Mail has a new charity partner, so we should soon see slogans declaring their association with "Action for Children", replacing that linking them to The Stroke Association.

Not much left of May now, but still time for more slogans, so let us know what you find and we'll report them here.

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Christmas Stamps will include children's designs again.

The Children's Christmas Stamp Design Competition is back - it doesn't seem four years since the last one, but this year's Christmas stamps will include winning designs by primary school children.  

The competition theme is "What does Christmas mean to you?" and as before schools are being encouraged to participate with prizes for the winning designer and school, and regional winners.  The competition closes on 17 March, with winners announced in late July, and the stamps going on sale in November.

It's not clear whether the stamps will be additions, as in 2013 when the Father Christmas and surprised-looking Angels stamps were issued in separate booklets, or whether these will form part of the main issue - or something else. 

In the main publicity Royal Mail indicate that:

Two lucky winners will see their designs made into one of the 1st or 2nd Class Christmas stamps for 2017.

But the entry conditions state that  

there will be two different Christmas stamp sizes produced in 2017: a large and a small size as shown opposite. It is therefore important that the design can work for both sizes. 

To illustrate this Royal Mail demonstrate how one of the 2013 designs would look as a definitive sized and Large Letter sized stamps.  With this year's stamps having religious designs, these are likely to be additions, but in both normal and large letter designs.

Entries are not limited to children at conventional schools and home-schooled children may also enter.  Full details and very lengthy terms and conditions can be found here.

And a reminder of the winning 2013 designs

It does seem a pity to limit the designs to under 12's.  Older children with a real interest in art and design in their further education can produce better designs which show more skill.  The design by Stephen Moore used in 1981 for the 22p stamp is probably one of the best Christmas stamps we've had!

Perhaps they think that designs by today's teenagers would be too anarchic?

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Royal Mail competitor Whistl (TNT) suspends mail delivery.

Private postal business Whistl - formerly known as TNT - has suspended its door-to-door delivery service in London, Liverpool and Manchester and is consulting 2,000 workers on redundancy.

Whistl will continue to provide a service, but will revert back to using the Royal Mail for the "final mile".  Shares in Royal Mail rose 3.3% after the news was announced.

TNT Post UK launched its end-to-end delivery service in West London in April 2012, and by the end of 2014 had expanded within London and Manchester, as well as to Liverpool.  Under its new name, Whistl, it has been delivering to 2m households, around 7.4% of all UK households, compared to 4.1% in 2013.

But the news will probably be welcomed by London householders, companies and local authorities who have been using the service, as there have been many reports over the last year or so about mail being dumped in hedgerows instead of being delivered.

- BBC News, Sky News, Post and Parcel.


UPDATE 9 December 2015
Example of the whistl PPI (right), on a label stuck over the TNT PPI printed on the envelope.
 

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'Postal boxes' coming to Morrisons

May 12th 2014: InPost, the largest global operator of a 24/7 parcel locker network, has secured an agreement with Morrisons Supermarket to host parcel lockers across the UK. 

InPost continues to rapidly expand its collection points throughout the UK, with the intention of achieving in excess of 1,500 sites by the end of the year. To accelerate the locker system roll-out, the company has signed an agreement with Morrisons, which operates a total of over 500 Superstores around the country. The first collection point is now operating and is located at the Morrisons site on Dewsbury Road in Wakefield, with plans for further lockers to be established throughout the country to develop a 24/7 ‘click and collect’ network.

Lorna Mushing, Estates Manager at InPost, commented: “Morrisons is a trusted brand in the UK and we are delighted to be working alongside the property team to develop the locker locations at such an established, forward-thinking company. It’s been extremely heartening to see the e-commerce, retail and logistics sectors embracing our unique, robust and highly secure facilities. The lockers deliver real added-value to our client partners and host sites and InPost now boasts close to 1,000 collection points across the UK, since the company’s launch in April 2013. The company has seen rapid growth and is now the largest network of its kind in the UK and this partnership with Morrisons will help to further increase the pace of our expansion.”

Stacey Elsworth, Estates Data & Information Manager at Morrisons, said: “We have worked very closely with InPost over the past few months in order to install the parcel lockers at Morrisons sites across the UK. We are excited about this new venture and it offers a real opportunity to existing Morrisons customers, along with the local community, to have a parcel collection service that suits their needs.”

The InPost system is ideal for e-commerce, the retail sector, business-to-business applications and other markets, where ease of parcel collection is crucial. The lockers enable customers to place orders online from a range of different retailers that they then pick up from a local site, at a time that suits them. 

Locker parcel collection is the solution for busy shoppers who don’t have time to wait in for a traditional delivery, a near impossible task for 56% of today’s consumers . Provided by InPost, the collection point houses 47 individual lockers of varying sizes and will be conveniently located at stores throughout the country, allowing local shoppers to collect or return their parcels at any time of the day or night.

InPost is operated by Integer, a Polish company. InPost has introduced the solutions already in Australia, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.  For more inforamtion see http://www.inpost24.com/ 

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Happy St George's Day ! - and other news

Royal Mail intelligent letter processing offices applied a special slogan postmark yesterday for mail to be delivered today marking the English Saint's Day, here used at Tyneside Mail Centre (Newcastle Sunderland).

Other news:

Romford MC is stuck in the past and is still congratulating Rosie Hargreaves who won the Royal Mail Christmas Stamp design competition, this one dated 22 March 2014

And proof that not only are modern commemoratives used on social mail, but also that they are used early in some cases.  Here's the Barbara Ward 'Remarkable Lives' stamp used at South Midland Mail Centre on 24 March, the day before it's official issue.

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Christmas Stamp competition winners get further slogan postmarks

Following the daily postmarks for each of the Design A Stamp competition finalists, Royal Mail have told us that there will be a national postmark for each of the winners of the Christmas Stamp Design Competition.
 
There is one each for Molly Robson and Rosie Hargreaves.  Their postmarks will feature on mail delivered from November 5^th (Molly) and November 12^th (Rosie).  

This means that the postmarks started in use yesterday Monday November 4th (I didn't get one this morning) so please send examples from any office on any day, and we'll post them here later today or when we get back from Stafford at the weekend.

Less than 90 minutes have passed and I can now show the first images from Mike M and John E - thanks guys!

4 November 2013 -

Congratulations to

Molly Robson

Winner of

RoyalMail's

Christmas Stamp 

Design Competition

Lancashire and South Lakes MC,
Cumbria, Dumfries + Galloway MC,
North West Midlands MC

Unfortunately mid-Norfolk's post is handled by Norwich mail centre which doesn't have the facility to add slogans like these, and the news was too late for any of our contacts to send me a first day cover with this slogan.   But one of our contributors in Glasgow was more fortunate and has sent this image over a FDC posted from Birmingham.  The slogan isn't as clear as it might have been, and the cover has suffered a little - perhaps it was raining.  Nonetheless it is a desirable item, and as good as a CDS FDC as far as I am concerned. 

Has anybody got any spare ones? 

This FDC with the Pudsey CDS also has the North and West Yorkshire 'congratulations' slogan.

Here's the second winner's slogan.  One from Chester that we received for the first day, and one from Cornwall (thanks Bob M):

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Christmas Stamp Competition Winners Announced

As promised Royal Mail has today announced the winners of their Christmas Design-a-Stamp Competition.

The designs were chosen from 240,000 entries and were selected by a panel of judges including His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. The stamps will be on sale from November 5th.

Molly Robson's stamp has been chosen for the 1st class value

Rosie Hargreaves' design has been chosen for the 2nd class value

Here's Rosie's postmark, sadly we don't have a good one for Molly!

Congratulations to the winners!

Product Details

The 1st and 2nd class stamps will be issued on 5 November alongside the Madonna and Child stamps.   There is a FDC and a Presentation Pack but no stamp cards.

The competition stamps are self-adhesive and have been produced in what is described as 'a concertina-style' sheet of 25 stamps, similar definitive business sheets.  We don't have an image of this yet, but it seems they will be similar to booklets issued prior to 2006, when stamps were larger than definitive size.  Despite the printing format, these stamps will be sold singly.

The 47 x 30mm stamps are printed in gravure by International Security Printers (probably Walsall).

These stamps were not distributed to dealers on a standing order basis, and Tallents House have confirmed that no stamps, covers or packs will be sent to standing order customers: they must be ordered separately.  Whether blank FDCs are available at POs I cannot say. 

Thanks to AP for this picture of the sheets, and what is probably the presentation pack

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