In 1977 the BBC gave airtime to Tom Jackson, General Secretary of the British Union of Post Office Workers. Mr. Jackson was up in arms about a recent proposal that the British mail adopt the German method of addressing envelopes in which the house number is written after the name of the road, not before it (i.e. Downing Street 10, instead of 10 Downing Street). Jackson spoke at great length about the enormous burden this change would place upon postal employees, insisting that "Postal workers would be furious because it would turn upside-down the way we have learned to sort." His comments elicited an immediate reaction from the audience, many of whom phoned up to voice their support for Jackson's campaign. What the audience didn't realize was that there were no plans to change the way the British addressed their mail. Mr. Jackson's diatribe was an elaborate April Fool's Day joke.
Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.

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How thick Are you!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Michael Stevens  in  school  on  Mon Mar 22, 2004  at  08:53 AM

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NOw if Only the Brits can learn to get there Post codes so people can understand them rather than ER45SDFA4498EDK are they afraid that their postmen might know which part of London they are actually working in?
Posted by T. Lima  in  Australia  on  Sat Jul 24, 2004  at  01:39 AM

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huuuuuw dare yow. You insult my nations postal system this means war. AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH
Posted by seamus  in  York  on  Tue Feb 22, 2005  at  01:27 AM

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how dare you I will spank you silly for insulting this fine countries postal network. AAARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Posted by seamus  in  York  on  Tue Feb 22, 2005  at  01:28 AM

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Very good!
Posted by E1-4727-rettet ihn!!!  on  Wed Mar 30, 2005  at  01:23 AM

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British postal system is flourishing throughout the world except US. Americans try to be different from the British(and maybe, the rest of the world), thats why they think they are right and everyone else (which makes up 85% of the world population) is wrong.
Posted by Manowar  in  USA  on  Wed Mar 30, 2005  at  11:36 AM

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WOWA!!!!!!! calm down People!!! british sux
Posted by mitchell  on  Wed Mar 30, 2005  at  08:06 PM

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Jezz, hate to break it to you, manowar, but you really have no frickin clue what you're talking bout.
Posted by Rod  in  the land of smarties.  on  Wed Mar 30, 2005  at  08:50 PM

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How is the British postal system flourishing throughout the world again? RE: Postcodes - Aussie's have it sooo easy - 4 digit numbers to remember and that's it.
Posted by Smerk  in  to mischief  on  Wed Mar 30, 2005  at  09:22 PM

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smileys
Four digits!?! We barely make it into double figures in Dublin and that's the CAPITAL.
Posted by nymph  in  dublin(now that's in ireland, ok, people?)  on  Thu Mar 31, 2005  at  05:34 AM

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Wow, manowar, 85% was a terrible estimate. There are roughly 6.5 billion people in the world and 300 million of them live in the US. That's about 4.5% of the world population.
Posted by Chris  on  Sat Apr 02, 2005  at  11:05 AM

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Hey, our postcodes rule! Let's take one apart -

WA7 6LD
Area WA (for Warrington - nice and sensible), district 7, sector 6, walk LD. How simple is that?! Your 54567423 rubbish just doesn't mean anything!
Posted by Rissa  on  Sun Apr 03, 2005  at  07:43 PM

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Only a Brit would piss and moan over another country's method of writing a freakin POSTAL ADDRESS. In the US, we honestly don't care about our own method, let alone anyone elses. We find things less trivial to worry about.
As for the joke, it's funny to see someone panic over such a trivial thing. This guy gets my respect.
Posted by Manic  in  Ohio, USA  on  Mon Apr 04, 2005  at  07:49 PM

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And, amazingly enough, the chat generated is about a sidebar comment and not the posting.

Even greater results of the prank.
Posted by Bryan  in  Leavenworth, Kansas  on  Wed Apr 06, 2005  at  12:10 PM

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Actually, the moaning started by someone who wasn't English (T.Lima).

And it is pretty simple - you don't need a knat's brain to figure out what is going on. As for the postal system, it certainly works very very well.
Posted by Threep  in  UK  on  Thu Apr 07, 2005  at  07:43 AM

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Now thats funny.
I don't care who you are
Posted by Creel  in  USA  on  Thu Apr 14, 2005  at  05:16 PM

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And we get our post delivered to our doors...don't have to go outside in the winter or worry about thugs trashing our "mailboxes"
Posted by Phucking Yanks  in  England  on  Fri Apr 15, 2005  at  06:13 AM

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So long as the mail gets through, it hardly matters if latin codenames are used...

The real stupid people aren't the ones who believed the hoax, but the ones who thought the campaign was worthwhile. How stupid do you have to be to be unable to decipher Downing Street 10?
Posted by J. Lam  in  Canada  on  Wed Jun 01, 2005  at  09:08 PM

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Nice site Personally, I think the UK way of addressing letters, with the places getting larger with each line, isn't as logical as, say, the Russian way, where the name of, say, the city goes at the top and the destination gets more specific as you go down. But it's not something to get hot and bothered about.
Posted by Al  in  UK  on  Sat Aug 27, 2005  at  02:30 PM

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Whoever wrote that Americans try to be different from the British and the rest of the world definitely doesn't know what he's talking about.

It seems to be the British who do that more. Some examples.

1. The British drive on the left side of the road. Except in commonwealth countries and Japan, this is not the way most of the world does it.

2. Use of British spellings despite the fact that American English is the most commonly used in the world. I really don't care about this, but Brits tend to get pissy if you don't use their spellings in things like Wikipedia.

3. Resistance to changing to the euro. The British monetary system is just confusing if you aren't used to it.

People often cite American resistance to the metric system, but we're really just using a system passed down to us from the British, so that's hardly an attempt to be different.
Posted by Hrmm  on  Wed Sep 21, 2005  at  12:49 AM

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