This post has been long in the writing. Over 48 hours in fact. On 7 August, in the evening, I tweeted something. I just wanted to make a point and expected maybe a few of my friends would retweet. I had no idea that what followed would follow. Within minutes, over 5,000 people had retweeted my tweet. The number is still increasing. On top of that, there were people who, because of the way Twitter seems to work, retweeted under their own ID. Someone told me last night that there had been over 10,000 responses to my original message. I think everyone has lost count. But, it seems, I started something.

I’ve had a long and candid conversation with someone from Royal Mail. During that conversation, some promises were made by both sides. I hope I’m keeping to my side of the bargain. Royal Mail have already kept one of their promises. Others will take longer to consider. I promised to try to be fair in my blog post, even if I did not agree with Royal Mail. I have promised that if they comment on this post I will publish their comment. Can’t be fairer than that. And, of course, I will also publish anyone else’s comments.

Before continuing, I want to give some credit to the people in the Royal Mail setup who form what I’ll call their “social media team”. They don’t make the decisions. They sit in the firing line. As one put it “Social media is a 24 hour thing. Sleep is for the weak.” I’ve added to their workload directly and indirectly. They’ve also had to contend with complaints about under-supply of Olympian stamps and so on. They can’t win of course. No-one in their position ever will. But, you Royal Mail bosses, they, like the people who come to our letterboxes day in, day out, in all weathers, are more important to the business than you. Anyone in the firing line is worth ten of anyone sitting in a comfortable office with a team of servants between them and reality. But I digress!

So here’s the story (so far).

The Olympics

And next…?

When all the excitement of the Olympics dies down, there will be another event – the Paralympics. This is where athletes with disabilities compete. Our GB Paralympians will have trained just as hard, some say harder, than their Olympic counterparts. Some have been born with a disability; others have sustained injuries whether playing on railway lines or as members of our armed forces. They will compete with the same spirit, the same desire to win. But Royal Mail will not honour Paralympian gold medal winners with their own stamp. They will, instead, be featured on a set of six stamps, a sort of group hug thing.

This is because Royal Mail and ParalympicsGB (who agree with Royal Mail’s approach) think that our Paralympians will win too many gold medals. Now, I may be wrong here but would it not be the case that, if they win more golds than the Olympians have, this simply means that a higher proportion of them are the best in the world? Does first class achievement deserve second class recognition?

After talking to Royal Mail, I admit that I can sort of see their point. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in their hierarchy there is someone admitting to him- or her- self that they got things wrong. I’ve included links to other blogs and web sites below and won’t repeat them here. You can read for yourself. Actually, I don’t blame Royal Mail as much as the British Paralympic Association. The Olympic stamp operation has been years in the planning. I have to accept that it is now too late to do anything about the Paralympics. But in the period when Royal Mail were discussing the how-to’s with ParalympicsGB they (PGB) acquiesced too quickly.

What we have ended up with is both Royal Mail and ParalympicsGB saying that our Paralympians are too good and for practical reasons they need to be taken down a peg or two. I can understand Royal Mail saying this but ParalympicsGB?

Baroness Grey-Thompson is a patron of ParalympicsGB. Not that long ago she had bad experiences on the London Tube simply because she had a disabiilty. Apparently not a one-off. She is an inspiration to many but some people didn’t see that. If someone has a disability they are, it seems, fair game for whatever treatment someone wants to dish out.

The Paralympics provide an opportunity to drive home the message that Paralympians, like any people with a disability, are just as good as anyone else. They are a lot more capable than many.

They are certainly a lot more inspirational.

Granted that the projected medal tally may be the result of the UK investing more in sport for those with a disability than other countries but then the UK probably invests more money in training 100 metre athletes than a certain Mr Bolt’s country. Investing money is only part of the equation. Far more important is the ability, drive and dedication, the will to win, of the individuals.

Royal Mail say it’s logistically impossible to run off that number of stamps. It is now, unfortunately. But it was not at some point in the past. And at that point ParalympicsGB could have made a difference. They chose not to push the point. Today people are saying that because they said ok, that’s fine. Why is anyone arguing for more? Someone tweeted me “There’s no point in putting public pressure on them if the people that actually matter made the decision.” So if ParalympicsGB are the people that actually matter and, if the vast majority of tweets are to be believed, people are holding them to account, it is they and not Royal Mail who need to say sorry.

Around here, the latest BT Phone Book has, as its cover-boy, a certain Paralympian, Nathan Stephens. BT gave him a cover before he even became a Paralympian. Because he’s a local guy who did well. I know a lot of people who have kept that phone book in its cellophane wrapper as a memento. But we will not have the opportunity to queue at our post office to get a little stamp. For 60p we could have had a little bit of sticky paper that we could have put into a frame or something as a permanent souvenir of Nathan’s gold (and he stands as much chance of winning one, if not more chance, than most of the Olympian gold winners).

An Aside!

You may have noticed that I have not used the term “disabled” but rather use the phrase ”with a disability”. There is a  difference. You perceive someone to be disabled or not based on what you see. You will not necessarily see that someone is totally deaf (if totally deaf they may not wear a hearing aid). That someone has a disability may be beyond your perception.

Similarly I don’t tag someone “epileptic”. But I may say that person suffers from occasional epileptic fits.

Anyhow …

As I said, on the evening of 7 August I innocently tweeted

So @RoyalMail don’t plan to issue stamps if any Paralympians get golds. Please RT if you agree this is totally unfair. #paragoldstamps

I added a hashtag (the #) as that seems to be the way to go on Twitter.

I thought maybe I’d get a few retweets. But I was happy I’d made my point; an individual cannot achieve more, I thought. If I’d had any notion in advance of what followed I’d have been a bit more careful with my 140 characters. As it was, I spent a lot of time tweeting corrections – mentioning that Royal Mail WERE issuing stamps (though not individual ones) and providing links to the Royal Mail web site and to the page on the ParalympicsGB site where they issued a statement later that evening. Thanks to the many who then re-tweeted my corrections and links. Not everyone agreed with me but the majority did. And when the “correction” messages circulated the responses became “shame”, “not good enough” and so on.

There were two things wrong with my tweet. I said “RoyalMail don’t plan to issue stamps if …”. Actually, they did intend to issue a 6-pack of stamps. But on the other hand, that was irrespective of how many, if any, golds were won. If, as someone suggested, there were 100 Paralympian golds, that would mean cramming over 10 people onto a single stamp. A few people actually said I was right to say that as, in effect, there would be six stamps if there wasn’t a single gold medal winner and so Royal Mail’s plans were actually to ignore golds. But the bigger response was “not if but when”. I did tweet many times a correction about the “don’t plan” bit and, to be fair to them, Royal Mail acknowledge this as they were seeing all the tweets.

But, overall, what was coming back to me was a feeling that ParalympicsGB had let people down. I have to say that I get the impression that whilst many think Royal Mail may have scored a public relations own goal and that their logistics excuse is a red herring, it is the British Paralympic Association that’s the target of the bile.

In general, the vibe I get (and as the person who started all this, I’m getting more feedback than many people) is that the powers that be should have thought more. If the logistics of doing something for Paralympians were impossible then what might be done for Olympians should be limited. The word “equality” is being repeated time and again.

Having spoken to Royal Mail, I have to say that I think that if they could turn back the clock they would have done things differently. Behind the scenes, I think they have been caught out by not only the strength of feeling about the Paralympics but by the number of Olympic golds. They have had to deal with complaints about insufficent supplies of Olympian stamps. At one point, they ran out of gold paint.

But, as I have said that someone else said, the people that matter have said ok. So it is not Royal Mail who have let people down, it is the British Paralympic Association. The people that matter could have done better! You may disagree with me but that is my view.

And what happened?

Apart from the thousands of retweets, a number of blogs and websites covered the issue. Those I know about are linked here. Links open in a new window/tab depending on your browser settings. If you know of other links I should include, please let me know.

Royal Mail Group Website
ParalympicsGB Statement

The BBC’s Ouch Site
The channel 4 Paralympics Blog

Channel 4 are the Paralympics broadcaster as the BBC decided not to fill that role. Yet another instance of the Paralympics being treated differently!

The “In a Different Voice” Blog
Steve Allman’s Blog
Virtual and Real World Research Blog

I hope I’ve got that right. This is a really well-balanced article.

The Guardian Newspaper’s Web Site

Other newspapers have covered this but, as yet, I haven’t tracked down the links.

A Little Diversion

As I’ve mentioned above, after my initial tweet on 7 August I spent some time tweeting out a correction linking to the Royal Mail web site. I was surprised, therefore, to get a message on the morning of 8 August to say that the page to which I was sending out links had changed. More fundamentally, I was told, it looked like Royal Mail were trying to undermine my “campaign” (?) by making it look like they had issued a detailed statement on 6 August, the day before I tweeted. I put this to Royal Mail and they responded straight away that this was not their intention; it was a result of “the system” doing whatever “the system” does. And one of the Royal Mail promises was to correct that. They didn’t waste time. The date of their statement has been changed to 8 August. This is a small issue for me but, it seems, a bigger one for others. But it is a diversion and Royal Mail have sorted things.

The End Game

There won’t be individual stamps for Paralympian Gold medal winners. Whilst I think that Royal Mail are genuine in thinking, with the benefit of that wonderful thing, hindsight, that they could have done better, they simply cannot ramp things up in time. But I have made a few suggestions to Royal Mail and they have promised to look at them seriously. I’ll wait and see what happens.

But!!!

I do think that the British Paralympic Association need to say sorry. Sorry for accepting second best treatment. Sorry for not stamping a foot or two. Sorry for not realising that they could have done better.

It would also be nice if Royal Mail were to acknowledge that, with the benefit of hindsight, they could have done better themselves. That as an organisation that subscribes to the equality agenda, they shot a little bit wide of the mark.

It’s too late to change but saying “sorry” (and meaning it) will mean a lot.

Because our Paralympians deserve no less!