Royal Mail today revealed that it will be painting some red post boxes gold to celebrate every Team GB and ParalympicsGB gold medal win during the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. The UK is believed to be the first country to paint its post boxes gold to celebrate Olympic and Paralympic gold medal wins.
A dedicated team will be on standby to transform the specially selected post boxes within days of a win. The post boxes chosen will, wherever possible, be in the home-town of the winning athlete.
Many of the first UK post boxes were painted green to blend in with the landscape. However, to make them more visible to the public, bright red was introduced in 1874. Red has remained the standard colour for UK boxes from then on, with few exceptions. The gold boxes will remain in use and customers will be able to post mail in these boxes as normal.
Post boxes will not be the only things turning gold this summer. Royal Mail will issue special stamps to celebrate each Team GB gold medal win at the London 2012 Games with an action image of the athletes. These stamps will go on sale within 24 hours of a Team GB gold medal win.
It’s also worth noting that Royal Mail are not surcharging customers for any deliveries during the Olympic Games including deliveries inside the Olympic Road Network, all the official Games venues and the Olympic village.
3 Responses
What else is Royal Mail going to waste money on next. No wonder postage is going up.
a pot of gold paint is about as near Royal mail will get to a Gold standard
Looking around the Country it appears that the Red Post Boxes are repainted about every Blue Moon. Does that mean that those Post Boxes painted Gold will still be Gold at the time of the next Olympics and probably the one after that or even the one after that or will they be repainted Red when the Post Office Management starts to think that their stupidity should be covered up in about 6 months time.
Obviously there will be a cost to this stupidity and as usual it will be the Post Office Service User who will have to pick up the tab.
As to the stamps. Where will they be on sale? It takes time and effort to distribute New Stamps across the country. 24 hours after the Gold Medal victory for the stamps to be on sale is not a lot of time. Also don’t I remember that every New Stamp design has to be approved by the Queen? Does that mean that they will be rushing around to the Palace and demanding that the Queen be awoken at say 2am to make a special stamp approval?
Will they have time to get them on sale in Central London and a few City Post Offices or do they mean in every small Country Post Office(the few that remain) or what. I for one would be very surprised if they manage every Post Office. Indeed I would be very surprised if they manage any Post Offices at all.