Royal mail Stamps

At the moment I am reading the Martin Beck Police Mysteries by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. The series was wriiten in the 1960s and 1970s by a couple of Marxists who used detective fiction to reveal the state of Swedish society under capitalism.

The book I am currently reading is "The Abominable Man". On page 96 of the Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition (2009) there is this quote:

Then he looked suspiciously at the stamp. It was rather pretty, with a picture of a bird. It belonged to a series of newly released stamps which, if he understood the thing correctly, guaranteed that letters bearing them would be conveyed with special sluggishness. The kind of sublety so typical of the post office.

That speaks as much of early 1970s Sweden as it does of The UK's Royal Mail in 2010.