The stamp that bombed
QUESTION Did the U.S. Postal Service issue a stamp for the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima?
FOR the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings on August 6 and 9, 1995, the U.S. Postal Service planned to issue a stamp depicting a mushroom cloud with the caption: ‘Atomic bombs hasten war’s end, August 1945.’
It claimed that this depicted an important historical event without offering a judgment.
Japan’s foreign minister protested, as did the mayor of Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, who said: ‘It is truly terrible that they could be so heartless.’ The Japanese embassy in Washington went directly to Bill Clinton’s White House.
U.S. Postmaster General Marvin Runyon felt the proposed stamp would commemorate a crucial event in the war and said that veterans, who made up a large part of the postal workforce, were supportive.
The stamp was not issued after the White House intervened. It was replaced with one depicting Harry Truman announcing the end of World War II.
The story didn’t end there. Vietnam vet Gerry Newhouse and graphic artist Ron Kaplan printed their own cinderella issue, which was not a legal stamp, but was put on envelopes as a decoration.
It featured a B-29 flying away from the mushroom cloud with the caption ‘August 1945’. At the bottom of the stamp was the words: ‘Atomic bombs end WWII.’ Hundreds of thousands were sold.
Mike Fields, Ipswich, Suffolk.
QUESTION Which countries have the shortest and longest working weeks?
IN HIS 2019 conference speech, Labour’s then Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell claimed British workers worked an average 42.5 hours a week, putting them above the European average of 41.2.
He caused a furore when he said he wished to cut the working week to just 32 hours. McDonnell had taken his data from a Eurostat report that suggested Austrian workers also worked 42.5 hours, while people in Greece and Iceland worked more than 44 hours a week.
It was immediately pointed out that these statistics were not consistent.
Eurostat received its data from individual countries regardless of methodology. Some, like Britain, used hours reported by workers through a survey, a method that has a tendency to over-report, while others, such as Germany, used more rigorous methods.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development rebuffed the Eurostat data and applied a standardised measure to produce figures for its 37 member countries.
These showed developing countries have the longest working week. Top of the list were Colombia at 47.71 hours; Turkey, 46.98 hours; and Mexico, 45.13 hours.
Poland was the longest working European country with 39.75 hours. Britain came in at 36.55, just below the OECD average of 36.82 hours a week. The Netherlands at just 29.30 hours had the shortest working week in the world.
A National Sample Survey Office report estimated Indians work 53 to 54 hours a week, more than any other country.
A. F. Singh, Lancaster.
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