Postal The government has given the contract to provide the outlet for benefit payments to the private sector company Pay Point, undermining its commitment to the Post Office. A quarter of a million benefit recipients, including pensioners and those on disability allowances (who previously relied on the post office for their service) will have to cash in their giro cheques at off-licences and petrol stations under new government plans. The Post Office is to remain part of the public sector in the big Royal Mail sell off.

Politics The recent Barnsley by-election, a seat vacated after the disgraced MPs fraud scandal, saw New Labour candidate and ex-Sandhurst officer polling more than all the other candidates put together, but only on a very low 36% turn out.  UKIP were officially second place over the Tories and BNP respectively. Interestingly the Lib-dems were beaten into 6th place. Perhaps more tellingly was the lack of representation to the left of Labour, suggesting the leftists desire to allow New Labour free reign to become the official voice of anti-cuts anger?

Environment The people behind Climate Camp have decided to call it a day after five years of putting climate change at the forefront of social concerns. After a week long meeting in Dorset on 21-27th February which involved over seventy ‘core’ activists a statement was issued to the effect of they will not organise a national Climate Camp or organise national gatherings as ‘Climate Camp’ or the Camp for Climate Action in 2011. This closure is intended to allow new tactics, organising methods and processes to emerge in this time of whirlwind change.

Oil Two of BP’s most senior directors have taken bonus payments for their work in the year of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Byron Grote, finance director, and Iain Conn, head of downstream, had their £800,000 and £724,000 salaries and benefits topped up with rewards of £380,000 and £310,500 respectively. BP’s annual report also revealed that Tony Hayward, the former chief executive who left the company after the worst of the crisis, will get almost £100,000 a year for his work as a non-executive of BP’s Russian joint venture TNK-BP. He left the board in October with £2m in salary and severance payments, plus a £600,000-a-year pension

Media The Murdoch media empire took another step towards completion as the decision by the Tories to wave through his controversial takeover of BSkyB making way for News Corp, the world’s third largest media conglomerate, to gain a near monopoly on the UK’s media outlets – including the majority of UK newspapers, plus TV channels and magazines. Cameron has spent a great deal of energy befriending the influential newsmaker, both in public and in private.

Cannell, a one-time milkman with no formal artistic training and described as an anarchist by Primal Scream singer Bobby Gillepsie, began designing record sleeves in the early 1990s for such groups as Flowered Up and Manic Street Preachers, working for both Heavenly records and Creation records who gave him studio space in their offices. His unconventional approach to art, using anything from house­hold undercoat paint to car body filler, along with a love of punk and its aesthetics, abstract art and cubism, made him the ideal artist to encapsulate the post-rave hedonistic culture of the early ’90s music scene, mixing child-like menace with exuberant colour.

Tragically Cannell took his own life in July 2005, and never received full recognition from the art establishment for his body of work. As he revealed in an interview “I was at the Royal Academy doing a photo session for a project. Managed to nick an apple pie and cup of coffee from the canteen. I’m quite proud of that, actually …”

Other stamps feature the cover of the Clash’s London Calling album and New Order’s Power Corruption and Lies.