Postcode system predictions

LordSutch · 28-09-2013 01:01AM

All I know is that postcodes are a Godsend in Britain, when driving around on a rainy night in the dark looking for a B&B or a hotel (as we recently were). And as somebody who has lived in GB, I have always found the UK postcode system to work really well for postal deliveries too.

Sat Nav + Postcode = sorted.

Hopefully ours will be similar to the UK version.

Capt'n Midnight · 28-09-2013 01:03AM

Deleted User wrote: »

True, but the original idea behind the postcode system was to fill the postman’s bag with only the letters he would have to deliver on his round.

The original idea behind post codes was "How the f**K are we going to sort mail now that all the mail sorters are pushing up daisy's on the battlefields of France ?" It's a classic example of why nowadays some workers are excluded from the military draft.

It was a temporary measure to allow untrained workers sort mail.

It makes no sense to revert back to a manual system when it's been completely been replaced by the handwriting recognition computers that have been in use for years.

It would be like asking everyone to learn the name of their local telephone exchange and use it when giving their phone number even though we were one of the first countries to dispense with phone operators and use direct dialling instead.

Sh1tbag OToole · 28-09-2013 01:04AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It would be like asking everyone to learn the name of their local telephone exchange and use it when giving their phone number even though we were one of the first countries to dispense with phone operators and use direct dialling instead.

I would approve of this change. As long as they rename the place I live to 'Klondike'

monkeynuz · 28-09-2013 01:08AM

LordSutch wrote: »

All I know is that postcodes are a Godsend in Britain, when driving around on a rainy night in the dark looking for a B&B or a hotel (as we recently were). And as somebody who has lived in GB, I have always found the UK postcode system to work really well for postal deliveries too.

Sat Nav + Postcode = sorted.

Hopefully ours will be similar to the UK version.

I find maps work quite well too.

Also postcode satnav only works if the houses in the code aren't too spread out.

Sh1tbag OToole · 28-09-2013 01:10AM

monkeynuz wrote: »

I find maps work quite well too.

Also postcode satnav only works if the houses in the code aren't too spread out.

In my day you would land up to some randomer and say "do you know the lad with the B&B" but society is too fragmented for that now and everyone is afraid of strangers anyway.

Capt'n Midnight · 28-09-2013 01:24AM

Jimoslimos wrote: »

The British system or any similar alphanumeric system would probably be best (and likely cheaper to license).

UK system is perhaps the most complicated one out there.

Like I said before US uses 5 numbers , as does Italy and a few others, and they have a LOT more people than we have.

Who really needs postcodes, apart from couriers (who between them should already have a total database of the country) and people who want to sell you something or target marketing ?

It's not like Joe Public can access the postcodes for free, post offices sell the lists.

As for GPS co-ordinates for postcodes , at present if I give my address in Irish I'll get mail delivered but New Zealanders can't take up the offer to come visit.

MadsL · 28-09-2013 01:28AM

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

Postcodes are overrated. Just another 'me too' item that our overlords want to fit in with Europe the rest of the world

FYP

Sh1tbag OToole · 28-09-2013 01:37AM

MadsL wrote: »

FYP

Loads of countries don't have them. We don't need them anyway. There has to be a simpler way to avoid postmen having to swim across rivers than writing a few silly cryptic letters and numbers on every envelope

Scaramanga 4 · 28-09-2013 01:43AM

AFG--Afghanistan
AGO--Angola
AIA--Anguilla
ATA--Antarctica
ABW--Aruba
BHS--Bahamas
BLZ--Belize
BEN--Benin
BTN--Bhutan
BWA--Botswana
BDI--Burundi
CMR--Cameroon
COL--Colombia
COM--Comoros
COG--Congo
COK--Cook Islands
CIV--Cote D'Ivoire
CUB--Cuba
CYP--Cyprus
DJI--Djibouti
DMA--Dominica
ECU--Ecuador
GNQ--Equatorial Guinea
ERI--Eritrea
ETH--Ethiopia
FJI--Fiji
GMB--Gambia
GIB--Gibraltar
GRD--Grenada
GIN--Guinea
GUY--Guyana
HKG--Hong Kong
JOR--Jordan
KEN--Kenya
KIR--Kiribati
MWI--Malawi
MLI--Mali
MRT--Mauritania
MUS--Mauritius
MSR--Montserrat
NAM--Namibia
NRU--Nauru
ANT--Netherlands Antilles
NIU--Niue
OMN--Oman
PAN--Panama
RWA--Rwanda
KNA--Saint Kitts and Nevis
LCA--Saint Lucia
VCT--Saint Vincent and Grenadines
STP--Sao Tome and Principe
SAU--Saudi Arabia
SYC--Seychelles
SLE--Sierra Leone
SLB--Solomon Islands
SOM--Somalia
ZAF--South Africa
SUR--Suriname
TZA--Tanzania
TKL--Tokelau
TON--Tonga
TTO--Trinidad and Tobago
TUV--Tuvalu
UGA--Uganda
ARE--United Arab Emirates
VUT--Vanuatu
YEM--Yemen
ZMB--Zambia
ZWE--Zimbabwe. dont have postcodes

MadsL · 28-09-2013 01:44AM

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

Loads of countries don't have them. We don't need them anyway. There has to be a simpler way to avoid postmen having to swim across rivers than writing a few silly cryptic letters and numbers on every envelope

Places like Benin, Burkina Faso, Peru and Uganda.
What an illustrious club.

Jimoslimos · 28-09-2013 01:45AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

UK system is perhaps the most complicated one out there.

Like I said before US uses 5 numbers , as does Italy and a few others, and they have a LOT more people than we have.

Except those postcodes are ridiculously vague, and only give a town or postal district and are completely useless with Satnavs. The UK system narrows it down to street/road level. 6 digit/character alphanumeric is easier to remember than 6 digit number and allows for far more combinations

Plus I'd appreciate when filling in address details online being able to tap in a 6-7 digit code with my house number and have it appear, instead of typing it out in full every damn time.

Sh1tbag OToole · 28-09-2013 01:45AM

MadsL wrote: »

Places like Benin, Burkina Faso, Peru and Uganda.
What an illustrious club.

Great bunch of lads

Cee-Jay-Cee · 28-09-2013 01:49AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

USA uses 5 digits for 303 million people so we only need 2 or 3 digits.

So Dublin City is already sorted.

No they don't, the full code is 9 digits but they use the zip code which is the first 5 digits to denote the area. The final 4 pin point the address but no one uses them.

Sh1tbag OToole · 28-09-2013 01:55AM

CJC999 wrote: »

No they don't, the full code is 9 digits but they use the zip code which is the first 5 digits to denote the area. The final 4 pin point the address but no one uses them.

That could happen here too. They will give €50m to Phil Hogan's buddy to design a system so it can go unused. Unless they start deliberately binning mail with no postcodes on it

A few years down the line some other amount of millions will have to be spent getting rid of the post code system that nobody uses. Kind of like the voting machines

Cee-Jay-Cee · 28-09-2013 01:59AM

el pasco wrote: »

I don't understand why a postcode is even needed like the vast vast majority of people get mail 100% and I never heard of the emerancy services not getting to someone because of a lack of a postcode

You obviously don't read the papers as there was a case only a few months ago where an ambulance ended up 30 miles away in a town land of the same name but in the wrong county. A post code system would have prevented that. A person then merely needs to give the post code and not name address and directions to the front door when contacting emergency services.

Capt'n Midnight · 28-09-2013 02:59AM

CJC999 wrote: »

You obviously don't read the papers as there was a case only a few months ago where an ambulance ended up 30 miles away in a town land of the same name but in the wrong county. A post code system would have prevented that. A person then merely needs to give the post code and not name address and directions to the front door when contacting emergency services.

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Except those postcodes are ridiculously vague, and only give a town or postal district and are completely useless with Satnavs. The UK system narrows it down to street/road level. 6 digit/character alphanumeric is easier to remember than 6 digit number and allows for far more combinations

Plus I'd appreciate when filling in address details online being able to tap in a 6-7 digit code with my house number and have it appear, instead of typing it out in full every damn time.

if you want your address details to reappear then enable cookies in your browser

I hate filling in UK order forms since you've got to provide extra lines for town , postcode etc.

Alphanumerics can be awkward for some people.

I've worked in call centres and lots of people don't know their post code (just stick in 1AA) and it was difficult to under the pronunciation of consonants by some Asians. And don't get me started on Londoners and F vs. S

Postcodes are a solution to a non-problem. It's something the vested interests could have already have sorted out except that would mean them sharing information or god-forbid putting their hands in their own pockets.

Most people have mobile phones these days. So emergency services can locate you to within 50 meters. Or maybe Eircom have a list of the geograhic location of every phone in the country seeing as how they have a virtual monopoly of copper outside the cities.
What use are post codes when the emergency services can easily be provided with the exact location.

Red Nissan · 28-09-2013 02:58PM

Jimoslimos wrote: »

GPS coordinates are unwieldy and difficult to remember. Plus it would be an almighty mess if everyone was to self-assign their property location, not to mention people mixing deg/min/sec and decimal

Whilst one cannot account for the perplexity of human thinking, getting a post code or map coordinates should be just a click on a map.

In a farm he can click his mailbox at the entrance or his farm house front door, or his office buildings in the next field through the farmyard. Brillo

Jimoslimos · 28-09-2013 03:42PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

if you want your address details to reappear then enable cookies in your browser

Private browsing.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I hate filling in UK order forms since you've got to provide extra lines for town , postcode etc.

Many forms you type in the postcode and the address autofills. Not a problem

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Alphanumerics can be awkward for some people.

I've worked in call centres and lots of people don't know their post code (just stick in 1AA) and it was difficult to under the pronunciation of consonants by some Asians. And don't get me started on Londoners and F vs. S

I touched on this earlier, but without an alphanumeric system you risk having long and difficult to remember 9-digit codes. Anyway working in a call centre you should be able to verify using NATO phonetic alphabet or similar. I recently moved house and the postcode (new) was unrecognised so had to ring my bank's customer service line. Twice they misspelled my address.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Postcodes are a solution to a non-problem. It's something the vested interests could have already have sorted out except that would mean them sharing information or god-forbid putting their hands in their own pockets.

Oh I do agree that there are groups looking to profit from this. Private companies generally don't like sharing data, so I'm bemused as to why you think they'd suddenly turn altruistic now. Still, that's not an adequate reason why we shouldn't have a good system of postcodes here.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Most people have mobile phones these days. So emergency services can locate you to within 50 meters. Or maybe Eircom have a list of the geograhic location of every phone in the country seeing as how they have a virtual monopoly of copper outside the cities.
What use are post codes when the emergency services can easily be provided with the exact location.

Is mobile phone triangulation used in most emergency cases, or is it reserved for exceptional circumstances such as missing persons? I honestly don't know but there are privacy issues regarding its use.

Mr Simpson · 28-09-2013 03:53PM

Mobile phone locating doesnt just pop up on the call takers screen, this isnt CSI. Its used in a small amount of cases, where ES make a request to the phone provider for info, not exactly the quickest process.

Cody Pomeray · 28-09-2013 03:57PM

Sorry if this was asked already, but will the Dublin denominations be abolished with the new postal code system?

Are the Labour Party finally going to wipe Dublin 4 off the face of the earth?

Capt'n Midnight · 28-09-2013 04:02PM

Mr Simpson wrote: »

Mobile phone locating doesnt just pop up on the call takers screen, this isnt CSI. Its used in a small amount of cases, where ES make a request to the phone provider for info, not exactly the quickest process.

It's just a data protection thing.

in the US they decreased the precision for privacy issues.

Technically it's possible to a few meters. ( at 3GHz light / radio only travels 10 cm per clock cycle )

Capt'n Midnight · 28-09-2013 04:13PM

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Private browsing.

your choice

Many forms you type in the postcode and the address autofills. Not a problem

someone (ie. you) pays for that

I touched on this earlier, but without an alphanumeric system you risk having long and difficult to remember 9-digit codes. Anyway working in a call centre you should be able to verify using NATO phonetic alphabet or similar. I recently moved house and the postcode (new) was unrecognised so had to ring my bank's customer service line. Twice they misspelled my address.

you only need a long number if you insist on addressing every group of houses

and like I said I've worked in a call centre , numbers are easier

Oh I do agree that there are groups looking to profit from this. Private companies generally don't like sharing data, so I'm bemused as to why you think they'd suddenly turn altruistic now. Still, that's not an adequate reason why we shouldn't have a good system of postcodes here.

it's not that they turn altruistic it's that they could already have setup a shared system where they could all benefit.

But no, they want someone else to pay for the costs of implemeting a postcode system.

And the thing is if they set up their own peer to peer, address to GPS database then they wouldn't even need postcodes because they'd already have the info from previous deliveries.

Is mobile phone triangulation used in most emergency cases, or is it reserved for exceptional circumstances such as missing persons? I honestly don't know but there are privacy issues regarding its use.

The only issues are privacy, at one stage one of the Irish providers allowed you to put your friends phone number on the web and see where they were. But that got pulled very quickly.

MBSnr · 28-09-2013 04:18PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I've worked in call centres and lots of people don't know their post code (just stick in 1AA) and it was difficult to under the pronunciation of consonants by some Asians. And don't get me started on Londoners and F vs. S

Perfect reason not to have them then....

Postcodes are a solution to a non-problem

My postal address is 18 miles from where I live. I live in a rural un-numbered house on a 3 mile un-named road, specified only by its townland name that covers many acres and houses. The ONLY person who knows where we live is the An Post postman. Every delivery driver or courier has to ring and then get guided in by house colours, type of stone wall and approx distance.

That's not a non-problem.

Scaramanga 4 · 28-09-2013 04:38PM

MBSnr wrote: »

Perfect reason not to have them then....

My postal address is 18 miles from where I live. I live in a rural un-numbered house on a 3 mile un-named road, specified only by its townland name that covers many acres and houses. The ONLY person who knows where we live is the An Post postman. Every delivery driver or courier has to ring and then get guided in by house colours, type of stone wall and approx distance.

That's not a non-problem.

A postcode won't fix that.

MBSnr · 28-09-2013 04:42PM

Scaramanga 4 wrote: »

A postcode won't fix that.

Erm.... Right. Most couriers would have Sat nav..... They'd put in the postcode that identifies your house front door and then arrive...
Sure the address would not be that accurate but the requirement becomes your name and postcode only.

Am I missing something here?
(Obviously as long as the chosen solution is granular enough to identify individual premises).

Jimoslimos · 28-09-2013 04:54PM

Scaramanga 4 wrote: »

A postcode won't fix that.

As I posted earlier, something along the lines of rural Australian property numbering could be used with postcodes

Jimoslimos wrote: »

House numbers could be assigned by distance rather than sequence as is mandatory in some parts of Australia. Houses are numbered according to distance (in 10s of metres) from the start of the road.

For example, A house 9264 metres from the road start point is given the number 926.

http://www.griffith.nsw.gov.au/cp_galleries/gis/master/3760bdf3647b82e5ebacad3ee60b315e.jpg

Hootanany · 28-09-2013 05:53PM

Why is a License holder being appointed, are they going to charge for it?

Capt'n Midnight · 29-09-2013 12:35AM

MBSnr wrote: »

My postal address is ...

Add a geographical code like GPS to your address.

It's a little more work for you.

Or you could insist that the vast majority of us have to go through the hassle of postcodes

And you'd still have to add a geographical code to your address anyway, so actually it's no extra work for you. It's just extra hassle for the rest of us.

CrazyRabbit · 29-09-2013 03:17AM

Last time I checked I could post a letter to another address in Ireland and it will arrive 1-2 days later.

Why do we need to change something that obviously works quite well?

Also...by adding convoluted postcodes that are impossible to remember, it will deter people from using the postal system. I actively avoid sending anything by post to my sister who lives in the UK. Although I can easily remember the house number, street name, city and count, I can never ever remember that damn postal code. It's too much hassle.

If they go forward with this I hope they stick to just 3 letter codes....and something that makes sense.

29-09-2013 03:36AM

CrazyRabbit wrote: »

Also...by adding convoluted postcodes that are impossible to remember

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_r1uk6Fkd0

Postcode system predictions

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