So let me explain this snail mail thing to you. It is orders of magnitude slower than e-mail, and yet you have to pay for the privilege to use it. The way you prove you have paid is by attaching real-life stickers called stamps to your mail.

You can understand that with all these drawbacks I don’t use snail mail very often, and that it therefore took me a while to realise ‘they’ have changed the way stamps work. In June of this year TNT Post switched from euro denominated stamps to non-denominated stamps, following in the footsteps of many other European countries (see illustration).

TNT Post is the postal part of the former national PTT. Until last year it had a monopoly in the Netherlands on light mail. The rise of both e-mail and competitors has led to plans within the company to fire 11,000 postal workers, who in return have announced they will strike on November 16.

(Image: crop of a scan of non-denominated TNT postage stamps)