Perhaps they’re just trying to tell you politely that (at least in relation to your job application) philately won’t get you anywhere!

I think stamp collecting has, for whatever reason, gone out of fashion, which is a shame. Back in the 1950s my father  bought both myself and my sister a stamp album completely out of the blue. I was around 8 years old at the time and enjoyed my new collecting hobby.

We joined a stamp approval 'club' where books of stamps were mailed to you and you had a few weeks to decide which ones you wanted to buy. I cannot remember how long we collected stamps for, but it was probably a few years. As time went on, stamps became much more interesting, especially British stamps. They started issuing stamps to commemorate anniversaries. I can remember getting very excited when the World Cup stamps came out in 1966, and even more excited when they had the word 'Winners' printed on them.

I guess the people who go train spotting feel that they don't get a fair press either - anoraks the lot of 'em.

I suppose what I meant was that new commemorative stamps were a lot more interesting than the bog standard stamps of the day. My father had two stamp albums, one of which had the penny black and twopenny red in them, not so valuable as I imagined they would be.
The two stamps which you uploaded I can remember my dad having, but they did not excite me that much, but from a historical standpoint they are fascinating, as an eight year old boy however...

For a time, there was a glut of stamps from East Germany, heavily overprinted, and frankly (pun intended) worthless. I am sure these were produced especially for sale to novice  collectors  in the West, who paid small sums for giant packets of rubbish. "Every packet contains some high value stamps." Phooey!

BTW, stamp collecting was a hobby of King George 5, so it ought to be OK for lesser mortals. There are cabinets full of his stamps in the British Museum, as I remember.

When I cleared my late father's papers, there were many receipts with old postage stamps, acting as duty stamps (Geo 5 in an era of E2R, but unfortunately, I understood these were not collectable.

Do people remember, or realise, that for years, one had to fix a stamp, usually 2d, on every document like a receipt. Printed receipt form pads had a space for the stamp, and I think you were supposed to overwrite it to prevent reuse. Cheque books were ready printed with a duty 2d stamp, so you had to pay for a cheque book to settle the duty. A book of 25 cheques would have cost you 50d or 4s2p - "four-'nd-tuppence". I can't remember how many cheques a book would have; it might have been 12, costing 2s in duty. nb That's all from memory, subject to error.