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What is the minimal possible UK address?

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Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#371

Post by zinekeller »

Karellen wrote: post #353
netsharc wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The country is called "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", or the UK for short. Strictly speaking, if you talk about Great Britain, you're excluding Northern Ireland, but politically GB isn't a country... Wikipedia says "Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean", although historically there was also the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Well, go complain to ISO then, not me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes... Edit: Also, if you've ever seen UK teams compete in international sports, all their athletes have "GBR" on their team uniforms.

Yeah, GP is shooting the messenger. If the GP is reading this, here is the address of the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency:

  ISO 3166-1:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country code
  ISO 3166-2:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 2: Country subdivision code
  ISO 3166-3:2020: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries
  
  Maintenance Agency
  
  ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
  c/o ISO Central Secretariat
  BIBC II
  Chemin de Blandonnet 8
  1214 Vernier
  Switzerland
  
  Tel: +41 22 749 01 11
  E-mail: customerservice@iso.org
  Website: www.iso.org/mara/iso3166

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#372

Post by fy20 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #80

In the US, someone I know who had a Post Office box liked writing simply `box-number zip-code` as their address. It worked. Eg, if you wrote on an envelope: 1034 21240 It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?) But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially…

When I was living in Dubai a decade ago, the PO box numbers were unique across the country, and there is no postal delivery service, so that's the only way to receive post[0]. Usually you'd use your work's PO box for the rare time you get post (typically AliExpress) but I was freelancing so had to rent my own.

My address was simply "12345 UAE" from anywhere in the world. I typically had to add more detail, as address forms would not let me enter only these fields.

[0] Couriers would of course come to your building. Typically the address you gave would include directions "Near Yacht Club" as street names were not always clear.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#373

Post by TMWNN »

glonq wrote: post #294

I was in Ecuador last spring and wanted to send a postcard back home to friends. Long story short, you can buy postcards but there's no stamps. There's also no post offices because the national postal service went bankrupt a couple years ago. I hear that maybe the national post office got revived in Aug 2022 though?

>I hear that maybe the national post office got revived in Aug 2022 though?

Apparently so! https://gringopost.com/2023/02/17/postal-service-of-ecuador-...>

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#374

Post by TowerTall »

rax0m wrote: post #88

Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish). [0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg

I am the only person in my country with my fullname. I have a couple of time received letters addressed to "My fullname, country"

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#375

Post by fakedang »

photojosh wrote: post #304
fakedang wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia". Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...

Is this not basically once-off nerd-sniping for post workers... "ooh: here's a challenge."? I'm sure you only hear about the success stories.

Haha, I can imagine some post-master and his workers' eyes glinting with excitement once they find a letter of this sort. "Ooooh, unmarked letter... It's showtime!"

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#376

Post by snthpy »

kitd wrote: post #273
rax0m wrote: post #88

Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish). [0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…

Isn't this how IP addresses work?

No 8.8.8.8 here, try over there ...

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#377

Post by Doxin »

snthpy wrote: post #376
kitd wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously: 1, London Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of: Mrs Williams, Clynderwen "Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and po…

Isn't this how IP addresses work? No 8.8.8.8 here, try over there ...

Not really. As far as I understand it the routing tables should always point you in the right direction for an IP address.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#378

Post by Doxin »

sigio wrote: post #45
jakewins wrote: post #9

Clearing out some old stuff from my grandparents, grandpa had at some point received a letter, from Stockholm, to their summer house in the woods addressed Thorvald The forest by

I remember from one of my first jobs, we received a vacation postcard addressed to: - Dear friends - Lange voorhuid - Holland .... Lange voorhuid was a mis-spelling of the streetname: "Lange Voorhout", which is someone unique to The Hague... but didn't have a housenumber (and it's a long street). Still, the postcard arrived at our company before the sender got back from vacation.

The dutch postal service is honestly kinda impressive with this sort of thing. I'm pretty sure they keep a name-address database or some such, because mis-addressing a letter will still almost always get delivered correctly based on the name.

IIRC it's fairly recently they stopped delivering to non-postal addresses. i.e. until recently you could address something to "The green house next to the church" and it'd get there.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#379

Post by Aromasin »

PuffinBlue wrote: post #215
Aromasin wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related, but I'm ordering a vehicle logbook from the DVLA at the moment. I'm a millennial/Gen-Z straddler, so it's been a real blast from the past-I-never-had. I need to pay for my tax online. In order to do that, I need a number which is found in my logbook (V5C), which I've lost. Can I do that online? Nope. To order a new log book, I need to fill out a V62 form and post it to the DVLA, along with a che…

I have lost a V5C before. You can actually order a 'duplicate' logbook with just the vehicle registration number, VIN and registered keeper address: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-log-book You can pay by credit/debit card.

Unfortunately, not if any information has change at all. In my case, a change of address. In that case, postage is the only option.

Re: What is the minimal possible UK address?

#380

Post by lurker_jMckQT99 »

udev wrote: post #187

In Canada, kids can write letters to: Santa H0H0H0 which is valid postal code, and used to be processed by volunteers around Christmas time. I suspect you can just write H0H0H0 and it will work.

Same in France/Belgium, kids can write a letter to "Santa" (i.e. "Père Noël" or "Papa Noël"), no need for a postcode, or anything else than the name :-)

(it is also processed [my guess would be by volunteers too] and kids receive a proper answer letter back from "Santa, North Pole")

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