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Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

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Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#31

Post by RobotToaster »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
matthewmacleod wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Royal Mail and the Post Office are two separate organisations.

I am aware. It seems, regardless of institution, that no one at these levels of UK public good can take responsibility. It is as if the apathy has been institutionalized in a declining nation state. Where and how do find someone who cares and the authority to do something about it? If you told me yet another UK institution had systemic issues (NHS?), I would not be surprised, and that is very sad. It should not be th…

Royal mail has been a privately owned corporation for some years now.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#33

Post by toomuchtodo »

RobotToaster wrote: post #31
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware. It seems, regardless of institution, that no one at these levels of UK public good can take responsibility. It is as if the apathy has been institutionalized in a declining nation state. Where and how do find someone who cares and the authority to do something about it? If you told me yet another UK institution had systemic issues (NHS?), I would not be surprised, and that is very sad. It should not be th…

Royal mail has been a privately owned corporation for some years now.

Ignorant Yankee behind the times it is. Much shame. Appreciate being corrected.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#34

Post by pard68 »

Loughla wrote: post #30
lostlogin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the mail service isn’t protecting paedophiles as far as I know.

[flagged]

Well I (an American) agree with your sentiment, it appears that the British royalty don't actually rely on tax money, but instead they keep 25% of the money that the royaly estate /makes/ and the other 75% goes to the British treasury.

But I might be wrong. https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57559653

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#35

Post by jsheard »

Loughla wrote: post #30
lostlogin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the mail service isn’t protecting paedophiles as far as I know.

[flagged]

You can probably guess - older demographics lean towards supporting the monarchy, younger demographics skew towards not being fans. There's a loose consensus that the royal family is a net positive for the countries finances, but I believe that involves some creative accounting where all tourism to royal-adjacent properties and the surrounding areas is attributed entirely to those properties still being owned by a living monarch rather than the state, and also implicitly assumes that they are entitled to keep benefiting from the vast wealth and estates they have inherited from those who took them by force. There's no politically neutral answer to how much they cost, you'll get vastly different answers depending on where your lens is calibrated on the royalist-guillotine scale.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#36

Post by orra »

Loughla wrote: post #30
lostlogin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the mail service isn’t protecting paedophiles as far as I know.

[flagged]

> The view that the monarchy is ‘very important’ has reached the lowest percentage since data collection began in 1983.

https://natcen.ac.uk/news/public-support-monarchy-falls-reco...

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#38

Post by andrewaylett »

Loughla wrote: post #30
lostlogin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the mail service isn’t protecting paedophiles as far as I know.

[flagged]

I fall in the middle of the camps -- pretty sure we still get a good RoI on our marketing spend on the royals, unconvinced the family wouldn't actually be wealthier if they'd abandoned the throne and taken all their stuff with them instead of it "belonging to the country", feel rather sorry for those who get the most tabloid attention.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#39

Post by andrewaylett »

The stamps have "unique" codes, but a genuine counterfeit must still have a code -- and to be useful it must duplicate the code on a real stamp.

If the counterfeit gets used first, the stamp is marked as spent, and when the unlucky purchaser of the real stamp tries to use it, they're told theirs is "counterfeit" because it's flagged as "used" in the database?

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#40

Post by RobotToaster »

delichon wrote: post #15

If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...

Forging stamps is up to 10 years in the UK, it's considered the same as counterfeiting money.

But I think it has to be proven that it was intentional, so if the sender was simply scammed by someone selling fake stamps that wouldn't be prosecutable.

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