After a week of media pressure, Royal Mail have announced that they will produce a stamp for each Team GB Paralympian gold medal-winner.

Royal Mail had originally planned to produce six stamps featuring all Paralympians, rather than the individual stamps the other Olympic athletes got. They said in a statement that to give everyone stamps would be "practically impossible":

This is not exactly the same as Team GB where each gold medal-winning performance is commemorated by a stamp, but this is for a very good reason.

In Beijing, ParalympicsGB won 42 gold medals over 10 days of competition, including nine in one day, and we are expecting a similarly world-class level of performance from our athletes this time around. As a result, it is logistically and practically impossible for Royal Mail to produce an individual stamp for every one of the gold medallists for ParalympicsGB.

But after a sustained media campaign, during which Tessa Jowell urged Royal Mail to reconsider its decision, the beleagured organisation caved in. Their stated reasons for the U-turn seemed a little off through. They said:

Following the great success of TeamGB at the Olympics, the popularity of Royal Mail’s Gold Medal stamps and the way in which our gold post boxes have captured the public imagination, we have decided to commemorate ParalympicsGB’s achievements in the same way.

Ah, so equality has been achieved because TeamGB won so many Gold medals, eh?  I'd have thought that would have only put more "logistical" strain on things...

UPDATE: Candice Macdonald, a spokesperson for Royal Mail, claims that the "impossible logistics" referred to the process of getting the stamps out the next day, which she said is still impossible for the Paralympic stamps. This was however not touched on in the statement.

She also told me that the "key reason" Royal Mail had changed their minds on the issue was "public opinion". Again, this was mysteriously left out of their statement, which preferred to suggest that incuding Paralympians had just seemed more moral: “We believe this is the right thing to do"