Second Class

I know that occasionally we learn stuff that, maybe, we should have known. Perhaps this is something I never really thought about. But why, why pray, do we have a second class stamp?

It occurs to me that since all my letters get dumped into the same post box there must be some early process (which costs money) to separate the first and second class mail.

A Royal Mail employee confirms this. The second class mail is sorted, put on one side and added to the next day's sorting.

Now forgive me for thinking the unthinkable, but if that happens then the same amount of mail is being sorted everyday and it takes one extra process than it need take to get to that point. So if someone could find enough money for overtime to sort one extra batch of second class post on one day then we'd have caught up, the second class system could be abolished and the price of a stamp could meet in the middle. Simples?