Admit your ignorance - things you've only just realised/learned

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Alex321

Guru
Location
South Wales
A first class stamp is now almost double the price of a second class one. At one time they were just a few pence more.

Yes, but they only cost a few pence then.

IIRC, just after decimalisation, 2nd class was 2p, 1st class was 3p - which is already 50% more. The % difference has increased over the year, but not by as much as you might think.
 

Chris S

Legendary Member
Location
Birmingham
Yes, but they only cost a few pence then.

IIRC, just after decimalisation, 2nd class was 2p, 1st class was 3p - which is already 50% more. The % difference has increased over the year, but not by as much as you might think.

10 years ago a first class stamp cost 63p and a second class 54p. It was only 16% more. It's now 95% more.
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
Even as a child, I knew decimalisation was a con - a penny chew went from 1d to 1p overnight. What a swizz.

Years ago when I was a whippersnapper working in a finance department introducing newfangled "spreadsheets" (VisiCalc I think) on space age "personal computers", the head of finance was an old school guy who was still bitter that his party-trick skill of calculating percentages in his head of amounts in £sd had been made redundant by decimalisation.

When I was introduced to him he asked "have you brought your soldering iron?". To him no technical person could exist without a soldering iron.
 
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Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
Did you feel like the guy who forgets his boots in The Deer Hunter?

Sadly I've not seen that film.

As things turned out I did have a soldering iron as we were forever having to make up RS232 cables with certain pins connected, for reasons I never quite understood, but it made things work.
 

Chris S

Legendary Member
Location
Birmingham
Maybe obvious but I have just found out that women cricketers wear a box similar to the ones male cricketers wear....modified design obviously.

I saw a woman getting hit in the groin at a judo competition. She fell down on the ground like a man would. This was back in the 1980s so she probably wasn't.
 
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