UPDATE: Gold Medal Winning Paralympians WILL Now Get A Stamp Each!
A while back you may remember I wrote this blog about the Royal Mail’s decision not to produce individual stamps for gold medal winning Paralympians.
Well, 400 Facebook shares and one appearance on Channel 4 News later, I’m delighted to reveal that the decision has been overturned! People power!
Here’s what the Royal Mail had to say about the u-turn:
“Royal Mail will issue individual first class stamps for each ParalympicsGB individual or team gold medal winner. The stamps will be on sale in 518 dedicated Post Offices across the UK within five working days of each gold medal win and at a further 5,000 branches thereafter.
The Gold Medal stamps will be presented for purchase as a sheet of two First Class stamps for £1.20. The sheet carries additional information on the winning athlete or athletes. The stamps can also be bought individually at Post Offices for 60p each.
This will be the first time ever that a set of stamps have been issued to celebrate Paralympic gold medallists from the host country. On 29 August, Royal Mail will also become the first postal administration whose country is hosting the Games to issue a set of stamps to celebrate the start of the Paralympic Games.”
What do you think of the Royal Mail’s u-turn on a Paralympic stamps? Let us know by leaving a comment!
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There are 11 comments on this post
Excellent news! It is good that they are selling them on a sheet of 2 as it will be more affordable.
I hope they allow you to subscribe online again for these stamps as the olympic ones sold out straight away in my local post office.
They’re going to be working all hours doing these stamps – because our Paralympic team is just awesome, and will win LOTS of Golds
Good news, glad to know that they finally saw sense.
So the line given by @RoyalMail was a pack of lies,as nothing else has changed?
Really pleased with this. Royal mail were fantastic in celebrating home grown talent in the Olympic games and it’s fantastic that they’re continuing this in the paralympic games. We have a fantastic team who work incredibly hard and deserve to be rewarded in an equal manner.
This is great news. What are stamps?
[...] was really happy to read this article stating that the UK will be issuing stamps in honour of each gold winning paralympic athlete or [...]
http://samedifference1.com/2012/08/15/paralympian-gold-medallists-will-get-individual-stamps/
Great! Just the gold post boxes to sort out now!
Being a carer to a disabled person, I believe that it would have been better to campaign for better access to public transport. Are you aware that about 27% of London underground stations are accessible but if you add DLR the number increases to around 30%?
I also collect stamps and have done so for 50 years. The Olympics stamps was a stretch of our meagre income but the Paralympics could be the straw that breaks the camels back!
Will those who campaigned for these new stamps subsidise carers or even the disabled who are also collectors in obtaining these issues? Probably NOT!
[...] the equal recognition of Paralympians as that of Olympic medallists, the Royal Mail will now be issuing stamps for every gold winning [...]
As a disabled person I can only admire the enthusiasm and perseverance of all of the Paralympians. but why are they forgotten as soon as the games are over, example if you try looking for the details of past Paralympic medal winners you will find nowhere near the information that you find about Olympic medal winners, Olympic winners will get listed on Wikipedia with profiles, images as well as being on news sites etc and remain there for eternity.
Paralympic medallists will sadly simply be forgotten apart from very minor coverage. Don’t believe me? try searching for Karen Watts, winner of two gold medals in archery in the Seoul 1988 Paralympics and you will find nothing to write home about.
This is a real shame as it takes years of perseverance, personal struggle and sheer determination to get this far, only to be almost instantly forgotten! Real shame.
I would love to get feedback on this or maybe even somebody prove me wrong.