Week #2016.05 on SébPhilatélie

An eventful philatelic week on the French side of the blog.

Monday February 1st: alternate and counterfactual history on France Culture radio.
As a fan of alternate history fictions (uchronie in French), I suggest to listen to five shows (one on literature with a radio play, and four on history) broadcast by France Inter and France Culture, two public radio channels.

Tuesday February 2nd: stampede in Adelaide after the rise of the postal rates.

What should have been the novelty of Australia Post 2016 postal rates... (Australia Post). 

Easy to follow for English readers on StampBoards forums (here and there), I summarized the new postal rates of Australia Post and an unexpected consequence in Adelaide. And there was a lot to say: a rising from 70 cents to a dollar, and even 1.50 dollar with the new priority rate and label!

All this in a context of great unpopularity of the thank-to-his-post multimilionaire President of Australia Post and an established reputation of snail mail...

... what every philatelist is going to remember of it (scan by GlobalAdministrator posted on StampBoards).

On January 5th, the South Australian main post office decided an emergency issue to face a ragional shortage of 30 cent stamps: a stock of machine stamps - kept for philatelic occasions - was printed "30c Adelaide 2016"... You imagine that now some philatelists and dealers produced covers in the very first days of their discovery and are now looking for genuine letters in every corners of Adelaide.

This week a strip of unused six could reach a thousand Australian dollars, more for twelve with the two types of these labels (change in the position of the year), and up to 1'400 dollars for a 5-8 January cover.

Friday February 5th: Britain got his national Postal Museum back... in 2017.
In preparation for its grand reopening The Postal Museum brand is relaunched by the former British Postal Museum & Archive.

The new logotype of The Postal Museum.

Next year the museum will open near Mount Pleasant mail center, in London, with the underground mail train unveiled to visitors.

Saturday February 6th: the social postman, a new speciality of France.
Since the Direction of La Poste understood they had to find new activities to avoid firing postmen by the thousands, the walking-cycling-driving postmen received new charged tasks: check if the old lady's fine, take pictures for the insurance company,... A policy branded "Cohesio" as cohesion/solidarity.

Because French terrestrial television system (TNT) is going high-definition only next April, the national wave agency is advertising people to check the HD capacity of their TV sets. La Poste appears on the side because postmen are going to help the elderly and the disabled household install their new TNT-HD adaptator if they do not wish to renew their equipment.

Know that, a few months ago, the government was thinking upgrading postmen as driving licence inspectors to resolve the long waiting list of young would-be drivers...

Other update: Timbres Magazine's Gauthier Toulemonde again on national radio.
Finally, I updated an older article because the French philatelic monthly's editor-in-chief talked at lenghth of philately, geopolitics and make other guests speak of stamp souvenirs on Europe 1 last Monday. The previous appearances were listed here in my review in English of his special issue.

Here are the links: Europe 1 Social Club, and illustrated with stamps by Timbres Magazine's team: 1, 2 et 3.

And finally a fine author starts a blog.
Starting September 2015 Laurent Veglio has been writing a series of interesting and well illustrated articles for Timbres Magazine on how French Napoléon III-stamped mail followed the British Imperial maritime roads between 1850 and 1870.

He's got a small amount of postal history articles in Italian hosted by Il Postalista portal, and is going to translate them in French on a new blog. One of them, Austrian aerophilatelicly inspired, was published in Timbres in the February issue.

Have a nice week reading all this and my sources.