I’m sure these postal inspectors would have no qualms about shooting someone over a 20 cent stamp too.
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I’d be happier with that if their conversion method was open. From what I can tell you have to use their API/site/app to translate any location.
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The Indian Mumbai lunch system is equally (more?) impressive, home-cooked lunch delivered to your desk, every day.
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This is nothing special, the computers that scan the post are only looking for number and postcode, unless something goes wrong, the rest is just for humans, post codes in the uk gen only applied to one street and some times as few as 20 homes, so if you have a postcode your down to 20 houses, and the number narrows it down, may seem special if you dont live here, but its rather meh, the other ones linked above with a map, or to a persons name in the village of this in the county of that maybe, are more interesting .
We all use post codes, for sat nav, its just part of everyday life now.
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Reminds me of a bit in “The Cuckoo’s Egg” (excellent book, BTW). Cliff Stoll (an astronomer and Klein bottle tycoon) tells the story of how he accidentally wound up tracking some Russian-ish hackers spying on various US military targets, back before any of them knew how to deal with that sort of thing. Everyone he told said, more or less, “Thanks for telling us; that’s not really our jurisdiction, but please keep us informed!”
At one point his CIA contact asks for some info. Cliff asks for his address, and he says “Just mail it to Teejay, Zip code 20505. It’ll reach me.”
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But millions of people in the the UK don’t having driving licenses, or ID of any kind, particularly poor people.
So it’s probably not entirely coincidental that it’s a Tory government that’s introduced mandatory voter ID (despite the UK having very low levels of voter fraud). Of course, they have allowed some other forms of ID, including an over 60’s railcard. However, the equivalent young persons railcard which is otherwise identical is not allowed:
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Came here to post this UK version of Gerrymandering.
In a quick bit of research:
approx. 74% of Brits own a passport (77 quid a pop)
approx. 75% of Brits own a driving licence (17 quid a go)
Can’t have broke young folk voting now, can we?
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I once read in a US magazine a story, possibly apocryphal, of a letter that got to its recipient with just three words:
WOOD
JOHN
MASS
The US Mail managed to decipher this as:
John Underwood
Andover, Massachusetts
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Thank you. This was nagging me at the back of my mind but I couldn’t remember enough details to track it down.
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Ah, yes. The “turn left where Joe’s brother’s first wive’s second cousin’s barn used to stand before it burned down in '63” directions. Always helpful.
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When I was little, I had an aunt who would just put her post box number and zip code on the return address on mail. I challenged her that it wouldn’t work, so she started sending herself postcards using just the 2 numbers.
They always arrived.
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Where I lived in Ireland none of the homes had numbers. The post arrived so long as you got the village on the address.
If you moved to the area the postman quickly knew who you were because everyone would gossip to the postman.
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Nowadays with GPS that’s silly but I remember as a kid trying to find that kegger house party, those directions would have been helpful.
Maps in the glove box were necessary but unless you had street level maps you could only get so close without the turn right at the big oak tree directions.
Our kid is 38, she never got to experience finding an address without a GPS or give directions to someone without a GPS.
When I was a kid we would make it 30 miles across the lake at night with only a compass, then Loran C came along and then finally hand held GPS with no map only waypoints. That was a game changer but you still had to be able to read a chart. Now everyone is so spoiled, no one uses a chart. It’s fun watching them use an app that has no idea there’s a sandbar between point a and point b.that they need to go around
The good ole days, sometimes I miss them, other times I’m glad those days are gone.
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This is how addresses are in the country my spouse is from. “75 meters west of the old [business that hadn’t existed in 30 years], [neighborhood name in sprawling city]” was literally her family’s address. And it worked, for the most part. People who actually need reliable mail service rent a PO box though.
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A college friend of mine used to regularly send letters home with an even shorter address, if you count the space:
Dad
05061
05061 is the ZIP Code for Randolph Center, VT, a community within Randolph, population 4700 at the time. Her father was the rural letter carrier based out of the community’s two-man post office. 
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Not doubting you, but I am generally skeptical of people who claim to have done this because it’s taken directly from the Anarchist’s Cookbook. Not to say nobody ever did it, but if as many people had done all the things they claim to from that book, well, the world would be a very different place.
Somewhat tangential to the main topic here, Wired magazine used to run an informal contest to see what people could get through the mail unpackaged. Like, people would put a stamp on a piece of firewood, write Wired’s address on it, and drop it in the mailbox. Some truly weird things made it over the years. Engine blocks, cooked chickens, soccer balls, you name it. There’s no way to know what all didn’t make it, but some amazing and weird things did.
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I never read that book, didn’t know it was in there. I can assure you this happened, sometime in the mid-80s. I thought it was funny it worked because why would the envelope from the “sender“ from Wheeling West Virginia be in a mailbox in San Diego?
The same friend did put a little pencil in the envelope once (with a funny note in the letter saying oops I can’t write anymore I accidentally sealed the pencil in the envelope). It tore through the envelope and someone at the Postal Service put it in another envelope. Those were different times I suppose.
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I mean… I thought it came directly from Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman? At least that’s where I first saw it… I think the Anarchist Cookbook came after this?
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The Google Maps system used in a lot of cars is great until you move to a new build estate, like I did in late 2021.
The new postcode had been activated by Royal Mail before we moved in, so we could receive post, but it took over a year until Google updated their postcode database, and no-one could navigate to our house by car. I used to give them the postcode of the opposite side of the road.
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