She may not need to be elected but there has been on going push to do away with the monarchy for her whole reign. She is still around as head of state only because she has managed to not say anything politically divisive and not stick her foot in her mouth for 70ish years.
Did the Queen have the power to intercede on his behalf? Did she, knowing that he had been instrumental in the war effort, refuse to do so? It's hard to imagine that the trial would not have come to her attention.
No, although the Pardon Power now exercised by US Presidents is indeed there because Kings had it, in Liz's case that power like any others which were once the monarch's powers to exercise as they saw fit are today exercised by "her" government which was chosen by Parliament, elected by the people.
By the time Turing was convicted that power is in effect in control of the Lord Chancellor, part of the British Government. Today although the title is the same, a Lord Chancellor would likely be an MP (ie elected, albeit not to do that specific job) but at the time Turing was convicted I assume it was a Peer (so, not elected) but chosen by the Prime Minister of the day (who is elected).
The most recent notable exercise of this power by the British government was to reduce the sentence for a murderer who (during day release) tackled some terrorist lunatic and thereby likely saved some people's lives.
more than that the royal family owns the crown estates as personal property. (its not a royal thing, it a thing that happens to be owned by the royal family) They lease it to the UK government and bellow market value rate. it is worth over 5 pounds. if the royal family were to have the crown removed they could end their current lease similtanously causing the government to have major problem and crater the uk realestate market
In Britain, it was often said the argument against ending the monarchy could be made in three words: President Margaret Thatcher...
Ireland and Germany seem to have done okay with their ceremonial presidents though. There’s no way the House of Commons would ever allow the dilution of their power by creating an executive presidency like France or the US.
Hopefully because people actually followed the point of the vote: to encourage interesting conversation not if you agree. The latter comment added nothing to the conversation, while the former did.
Cool design + polymer, but they should probably just abolish the £50 already. Very few places accept them. Never mind the £100 notes you can get in some parts of the UK. I would say they should encourage better acceptance of these denominations, but cash seems to be dying in general.
I look to Switzerland with envy, where as far as I can tell you can stroll into the supermarket and drop a 1000-franc note without issue.
I have heard this since I was a kid, in reality, it isn't true, at least not in London. I have never been refused when presenting a £50, not that I have carried them more than a dozen times. Most places that have issues taking them are small merchants who give away too many notes breaking them, so will often ask for a smaller note. When I was in New York once, I went into a CVS and bought $60 of sweets to bring home, the cashier shouted 'bill check' when i presented a $100 bill, so I guess I look more dodgey in the US.
Well, I had the opposite experience here in the North East - when my dad came over to visit he had a bunch of £50 notes he got from the cash exchange office and we literally couldn't spend them. He wanted to buy some jewlery for my mum and the store wouldn't take his notes. Few other places around the town wouldn't either. We literally ended up going to the branch of my bank and changing them for £20 notes and suddenly it wasn't a problem anymore.
It's just dumb. UK government should definitely drive a larger adoption of the £50 notes, it's so bizzaire to me that the British population treats their own banknotes like something from the moon.
The hell? It's unimaginable to me that places wouldn't accept a 50 EUR bill... Sure, the delivery guy complains a bit if you haven't told them beforehand you need change for it, but any shop is fine to accept it. 100 is less common, though still probably okay, even a 200 will mostly get curious looks, though for a 500 bill they'll need to copy your ID.
I don't agree that it's dumb - at least not from the government's point of view. High denomination bank notes are very useful for tax evasion. What's in it for them?
>>High denomination bank notes are very useful for tax evasion
How so? And if this is an actual, real problem...then stop printing them? What's the point of making currency that normal citizens have issues using?
I just don't undestand it on some fundamental level. Where I'm from(Poland)_200PLN(about £40) notes are very common in circulation, and if you were to pay for a 5PLN loaf of bread with a 200PLN banknote I can guarantee literally no one would bat an eyelid. It's a common and completely normal banknote to use.
Yet in UK, where people make more money on average and also buy more expensive things, the £50 is some alien piece of paper that most Brits have never even seen. The only other place which treats its own currency with such disdain is Germany where I saw signs on petrol stations sayng they don't accept 500 Euro notes. Well if you don't, then why even have them? What's the point? The government should be going after all retailers who don't accept any official currency, because that seems like the very basis of working currency system.
I think you're conflating twoo things as well. Retailers don't like high denomination notes because they're more likely to be forgeries (getting change from a low value purchase with a high denomination note is a simple way to launder forged notes)
Governments don't like them because of tax evasion (though they'll call it "anti money laundering because not all upstanding citizens are entirely averse to a spot of cash-in-hand money laundering).
I presume there's just enough demand from business (where using high denomination notes for high value B2B transactions has very low transaction costs) that they still print them, but I would be surprised if they're still around in a decade.
The explanation for not accepting 500 eur notes when you generally sell stuff for <100 euros is that you're asserting that your cash drawers won't have 400+eur in cash so you can't ever give out change from a 500.
However, if you're making a jewelry purchase with multiple 50 quid notes, denying them would seem unreasonable.
You can't refuse legal tender as a business in the US. If you suspect counterfeit bills, you need proof (the marker or it lacks some security feature like watermark or strip) and then you're supposed to call the police immediately about it. You can refuse the sale in general... but that's a tricky one left to someone else to answer.
Generally, a private business doesn't have to transact with you, so yeah they can just say "no I don't want to sell you this if you're going to use a hundred dollar bill".
Legal tender is only a thing for the settlement of pre-existing debts.
No, it's policy in every single chain store to do bill checks on 50s and 100s, regardless of what you look like. Those are the most common counterfeit denominations. Quite a few places do 20s as well. When I worked at an office supply store, the store manager checked our tills at the end of the day, if bills 20 or above didn't have a marker on them, I got in trouble.
The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think, although I don’t know how true that was. So the solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down. Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created. But:
- I don’t really think the problem is forgery. I think it’s that it is annoying for a lot of shops to make change for £50.
- I don’t think the government is particularly interested in making cash more convenient for people (card transactions are easier to track) and wealthy people mostly aren’t interested in carrying around high-value notes as credit cards exist.
In my experience most places were hesitant because they didn't have the change in the cash register. Anywhere busy with a full register accepted £50 notes happily.
edit: to add to that, it used to be that £1 coins were the most forged in sterling cash. I can't say if that's still the case, but at one point it felt like 1 in 3 pound coins were a fake.
Yep, my experience as well. I worked in a busy club all through university, and we never had an issue accepting £50 notes, but at the quiet bar I sometimes worked at we were sometimes hesitant to accept them as it tended to wipe out the float.
Minor, and probably specific to busy bars, but it did come up: there's also the practical issue of where you put a £50 note as there's no space for it in a register. So you kinda shove them at the bottom of another stack, but there's the danger that when you're very busy and handing change back you'd grab it without looking. So always had to tell another staff member there was a £50 in the register, and ideally that register got emptied asap.
Not quite one in three, but quite a lot. Here's a relevant bit from the Wikipedia page [1] :
> During later years of the round pound's use, Royal Mint surveys estimated the proportion of counterfeit £1 coins in circulation. This was estimated at 3.04% in 2013, a rise from 2.74%.[9][10] The figure previously announced in 2012 was 2.86%, following the prolonged rise from 0.92% in 2002–2003 to 0.98% in 2004, 1.26% in 2005, 1.69% in 2006, 2.06% in 2007, 2.58% in 2008, 2.65% in 2009, 3.07% in 2010 and 3.09% in 2011.[40][41] Figures were generally reported in the following year; in 2008 (as reported in 2009), the highest levels of counterfeits were in Northern Ireland (3.6%) and the South East and London (2.97%), with the lowest being in Northwest England.[42][43][44] Coin testing companies estimated in 2009 that the actual figure was about twice the Mint's estimate, suggesting that the Mint was underplaying the figures so as not to undermine confidence in the coin.
It's also that people don't care much about coins. When I used cash more back in the day, I remember going through my change from time to time and I had coins from all over the world passing as pence coins.
> The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think
That was what we were told back when I worked in a small shop in a theme park in the late 90s. That combined with the fact that because we rarely saw them people tended to be worse at picking out fakes than they were with smaller denomination notes.
We were to ask people to go to the cash office at the front of the site to have large notes swapped for smaller currency, £10 and lower. The reason we gave the customer (which as you mention had the benefit of also being true, even though I was very much given the impression it wasn't management's primary concern) was that it would take all the change from out tills. We would accept £20s, though the sign up front suggested they be changed first too.
> solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down
The recognisability helps with lower denomination notes though. And taking a forged £50 is more of a hit than taking a forged £10 amongst others.
> Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created.
The solution we are heading towards, more rapidly now due to C19's effects, is cashless. I still have a few coins in my running pouch in case I need to use a non-free public convenience and a few of notes in my wallet just in case the cards fail, but I don't think I've actually used cash at all in the last 12 months and that may remain the case once This is all over (there is a local corner shop that won't take contactless or other card payments for less than £10 - I simply don't go to that shop any more as that is inconvenient for me for single small items so I do without for now or walk further, and for needs >£10 I'll walk further to a larger store with more options anyway).
This is exactly right: you can easily accept £50 notes, because you almost certainly already have some £20 notes which have no purpose — other than making change for purchases of ≤£30 with a £50.
> The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think, although I don’t know how true that was. So the solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down. Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created
The £50 notes were perceived as "most likely forged" because - in addition to being temptingly large denominations - they're so rare the average person has never used one and doesn't really know what they look like. There's a vicious circle of course: ATMs don't dispense them and banks are unlikely to unless requested because they're not widely accepted. The £20 note doesn't have that problem.
What do people do then, do they just get lots of 20ies, or are they mostly paying electronically for anything > £20?
We have the a similar issue in Germany, but it's mostly with 200€ notes (and 100€ notes for a small shop, maybe). I've never had anyone even as much as look annoyed to being handed 50€.
Mostly electronic payments for everything now, but you could fit a lot of twenties in a wallet (or write a cheque to pay a bill) when card payments weren't so widespread.
Many places in London accept them (tourists often bring them, and higher prices make them more useful). With a new, secure design, I expect many more places will start.
That's true, the one place I see them most often is being smuggled out of China. Actually I have gotten them from cash machines in Covent Garden before as well. Since then I've wondered what criteria they use to pick denominations for each area.
I would assume the criteria is what mixture of denominations will require the least regular servicing. An area where the average daily withdrawal is high - ie a wealthy area - will run out more quickly if it's giving out small denominations, but in an area where smaller amounts will quickly be unable to provide the requested amounts if they're serviced with mostly higher ones.
It's probably difficult to find something to buy for £5 around Covent Garden, and no problem to spend £50. I'd much prefer some £50 notes than an empty cash machine.
There's also a high cash demand from tourists, and a high nighttime demand (when machines won't be refilled).
> smuggled out of China
That's unfair: completely honest tourists often have £50 notes, regardless of where they come from. The currency exchange office prefers high-ish denominations of most currencies. They take up less space, which matters when everything has to fit in a safe, and are generally in better condition.
Sorry, when I say "smuggled out of China", I don't mean it was illicitly gained cash or anything. China doesn't allow the export of currency above a certain (pretty restrictive) amount, so people sneak it out. I don't agree with that rule and it's not illegal to import that money to the UK, so I didn't intend any negative meaning with my comment. But since it is illegal in China, I think smuggling is the right term.
Anyway, the relevance to our conversation: since value density is highest with £50 notes, that's what they tend to bring.
1000 CHF bill are not really practical in Switzerland. Can’t remember seeing them as an option on many atms. And the only shops that will accept them are those where purchases are regularly in the several hundred francs range. But even in the large supermarket chains they might ask you to go change the bill at the nearest bank or postal office first if you try the buy a pack of chewing gum with it.
Sadly they will become acceptable most places soon - inflation will take care of that. I remember bars refusing to take twenty's as the night wore on. Now you can barely get a round out of a twenty.
I’m sure (as far as bars go) contactless payment will be preferred more in future. COVID has sped up the process of that. It’s unlikely to see many £50 notes around. There were already a lot of “card only” bars in London and that was pre-COVID.
Also inflation is low and will be low for quite some time so that won’t be a factor.
Ever since I've blamed myself in Scotland in 2019 when I tried to pay for a group of friends and the restaurant had a random "no foreign credit cards" rule, cash is and always will be king when it comes to the UK for me.
In many countries, accepting cash is legally required. Unless a foreign national can pay with their credit card reliably, such a rule should be the required fallback payment method.
The UK (and I would expect many countries) does not require merchants to sell anything to you if they don't want to. They're allowed to decide they don't like your money, and too bad you can't buy anything.
Some constituent countries of the UK have legal tender laws but a legal tender law only applies to debts and you have not incurred a debt when you offer to buy something.
Actually, when I sit in a restaurant, as I did, and have just finished my meal, as I have, and ask to pay via card (as the sticker in the lobby told me is possible), I have incurred a debt, which I am willing to pay, either by card, or should that not be possible, with cash as a legal tender fallback.
In pubs that are card-only, pay-first, you might have an argument - but this may become a discrimination lawsuit the moment my card gets denied when the sticker says it should be accepted.
I am not sure about this. I know there is a lot of controversy over inflation measures (mostly the basket of goods used, impact of tech in holding down the basket)
I take a unscientific approach in that I had a bar menu from 1971 (my birth year) showing the prices in old and new money. A pint of Skol was 5 new pennies in 1971, and today you can find an equivalent pint of lager at about 5 pounds.
So that's 100 fold increase in my lifetime.
A lot of that came out of the 70's and early 80s but current inflation does, anecdotally, seem higher than 1-2% a year.
Not based on my family outgoings, but if you want to use gut feeling rather than scientific measures that’s fine.
Ale prices themselves have increased 73% since 2000, lager 85%, according to beerandpub.com
Annecdoatally in 2002 I was paying £1.60 in a student bar in the south west. Earlier this year I paid over £5.50 in a sam smiths in london, you might think it’s increased, but those were two very different pubs though. London prices are far higher than the majority of the country, and the range is even higher now. Perhaps CPI should be measured on a regional basis, as rents in london increased due to high demand and high paying jobs, prices of goods and services had to also.
Since 2008 according to the British beer and pub association, annual beer inflation has been 2.8%. The most expensive beer since 2008 has increased on average 5% a year.
Beer will be higher inflation than other measures like Big Macs as the tax has increased on it - both duty and vat. Pre tax beer prices were 1.43 in 2002, 1.91 in 2008 and 2.42 in 2019.
Fees were a problem back in 1999 but they creased to be an issue in 2005 when they were added to income contingent repayments. Other tax rates or indeed disposable income isn’t included in that measure
CPIH figure includes houses, under that £20 today was £10 in 1990, so even lower.
I've lived in London for a while, and I'm still fascinated how uncommon £50 notes were. You try to pay with one and they look at you as if you were some kind of drug lord.
Hop over to Switzerland, and you can buy a coffee with a 1000 franc (GBP780) note without any issues.
I'm exaggerating slightly, but after going on holiday to Switzerland, the coffee vendor doesn't need to give any change for a thousand francs.
(Serious price comparison: I walked over the St Bernard's pass from Switzerland to Italy. In Switzerland, we paid €6.50 for mediocre commercial ice cream. Over the border in Italy, €2 for the most incredible gelato. Although it may be that walking down a mountain to get it improves your perception of an ice-cream.)
If you're a local and you try to pay with a £50 note then you get the 'you must be a drug lord' look. But if you're in a touristy area then this it's fairly normal to see them since foreign exchanges stock a lot of those notes.
On a related note, 50 and 100 dollar bills in New York City are generally not accepted in most stores due to counterfeiting. Many places also refuse them due to not having enough change.
This is a correct understanding, though the US bills have gotten harder to counterfeit in recent years with the addition of color shifting inks and 3-D security ribbons. I'm comfortable taking larger bills for craigslist stuff when I have a mini UV light and anti-counterfeit marker with me. Though I prefer to meet at the bank and immediately deposit in the ATM.
Finally, a better way to recognise him - instead of Benedict Cumberbatch's criminally inaccurate 2014 portrayal - or that renamed road on the MS campus - or the great British tradition of a park bench...
Yes that film was awful- they took an individual who was 'very warm and friendly'[1] and turned him into the prototypical savant nerd (Sheldon Cooper, Sherlock Holmes)
There is a certain vibe to many of his performances but if you consider that he even played (in the film not the book) a gay man in roughly the same time period in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a performance in which he is still a little bit cumberbatch-y for a brief moment but generally warm and humorous, there's more to it than that.
That’s because Turing in the movie had a textbook case of ASD. They just went down the checklist of behaviors and put them all in. It was cringey to see a character study get it that wrong intentionally.
About 10yrs of my academic career included studying much of Turing's work, I've read his biography by Hodges multiple times (one of the most incredible books ever written btw, covering in great detail everything you could want to know about Turing, his family, his life and his work), and worked closely with some of the best academics in the country on the subject of Turing.
I'm not showing off, and I don't mean to say my opinion is correct, but let's just say I have at least some claim to know what was going on.
I watched the Imitation Game with my wife who knew little to nothing about Bletchley park and Turing. I have to say, that given 90 minutes I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
I can say with confidence that pretty much everything said or shown in every scene is significantly inaccurate, but taken as a whole, and with an understanding of the restrictions, it's a very good job.
If you can't live without knowing the specific truth, read Hodges. If you can, just watch the film then get on with something else.
> I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
Sincerely, I do defer to you for your opinion of Turing's personality - but when I saw the film it was so very disappointing that Turing was written as a lone-genius type - while it didn't drive the plot, I understand it really wasn't what he was like as a person. Come to think about it, I can't think of any mainstream cinema production that portrayed a leading academic as a _normal person_ - they invariably fall into stock character tropes, and The Imitation Game was no exception. That's what disappointed me the most.
Additionally, like many other historical biographies, the film condenses multiple people - or in this case, entire teams of people into single characters. I can understand that for budgetary and storytelling reasons, but the film's decision to substitute Turing's circle of literally a handful of characters for what would have been hundreds of cryptographers and researchers (out of a Bletchley Park workforce of almost 10,000 people concurrently in early 1945!) was enough to break the film for me - and even if that fudging wouldn't have made me take issue with the film the scenes where Turing-and-Chums single-handedly make moral decisions about the handling of high-level intelligence certainly did. Those scenes added nothing of historical value and would have added emotional tension only to viewers entirely ignorant about how military intelligence gathering and analysis works - which, unfortunately, seems to include the film critics.
Does mainstream cinema production portray anyone as a _normal person_ ? It doesn't stop to academics. Every single profession has its tropes, and it's quite uncommon in my opinion that there's much deviation on it.
Police officers end their phone conversations abruptly, academics are lone genius, managers consider their employees as slaves, chefs dedicate their life to their art...
Cinema has its codes, good or not, so you shouldn't really expect them to not be there I think !
Personally I thought it was rather sad that it ignored completely the massive contribution made by the Polish Cipher Bureau and particularly Marian Rejewski.
In 1939 the Poles basically dumped an absolutely massive amount of information they had worked out about enigma on the British and the French. The Poles had a working system to decrypt enigma from (I think) 1932 up to 1939 when the Germans added more rotors to the machines increasing the complexity significantly. The Polish techniques still worked with the new rotors but the additional complexity slowed them down a lot.
I maybe remembering this incorrectly but I think the Poles managed to construct machines logically identical to enigma machines (i.e. the same output for every input) based just on messages they'd intercepted (without ever seeing an actual enigma machine). They gave one of these machines to the French and one to the British.
The "Bombe" built in Bletchly park was directly inspired by the Polish "Bomba" machines.
Right, when a large corporation bought one of my previous employers we used their more generous "team building" budget to take the software engineering team to Bletchley and one of the reasons was that two of our small (UK based) team were Polish and the Polish contribution on Enigma was so important. There's a little memorial to their work at the site.
I've never watched the movie, having also spent a bunch of time working with the Turing Archive's collection of his other work (he was really interested in morphogenesis, a corner of biology) as a side job when I was at postgraduate student I expect I'd just find the portrayal annoying.
It was not exactly inaccurate, more dumbed down. The film covered the basics well I thought, his early life, the impact of a relationship with a boy named "Christopher", the use of Bombe in breaking Enigma and the secrecy needed to keep the code-breaking from everyone. His personal life was I thought fair - it certainly compared role of women and gay men, and said something about need for brain not brawn.
It did dumb down in some horrible areas however. There was a overdone conflict between him and his superiors and peers - until they too realised he was right in Hollywood fashion. The actual code breaking was ... "my god what if they put Heil Hitler at the end of each message. We could use the new computer you have built to break the message and then put the play on right here."
But to be fair I don't think even I would have sat through ten minutes of Cumberbatch explaining cipher theory to get a proper grip on that.
Overall, its a good way to introduce the kids to the origin of computers, the need to stick to your principles, and prejudice is bad.
Right, tough to convey more of the true story and character of Turing in a 2 hr film. But my takeaways were a few memorable things like the moment of pure achievement/problem solving joy that any engineer/dev around here can relate to - collective joy at cracking a puzzle. I felt it.
And the pain that Turing had later in the film/in his life - I felt that too. Cumberbatch's weird self, and the overbearing lone/nerd vibe they gave Turing aside, they tried to convey the pain and sadness and I think it was portrayed enough for the audience to feel it and sympathize.
Could be argued that the film contributed to this path that he's now going to be on the banknote perhaps?
I was very disappointed in the portrayal of "Christopher"!
They have him say "boy" but they never clarify that the "boy" was 19 years old. I have little doubt that some people left the movie thinking that Turing was a pedophile.
Not that boy - Turing had a ... love affair (?) / crush (?) on a fellow school student (christopher) in their teens at boarding school. The boy died tragically during a summer vacation, having a profound effect on Turing.
Christopher was the name he gave to the first Bombe I think.
I don't think any part of the film implied pedophilia - not at all.
I'm also speaking from memory, but I remember being pretty upset that they weren't more explicit about his crime being strictly homosexuality and not about the partner's age.
The only actual description of his crime, if I recall, was that single sentence: "[...] accused of intriguing a young man to touch my penis [...]" at about 50 seconds into that clip.
I don't know. Maybe not everyone would interpret that description badly, but it doesn't even sound consensual to me. It sounds like he's describing himself as being accused of manipulating a child.
I very much doubt Turing would have appreciated his name and image being used for propaganda purposes by a government that is scarcely different to the one that murdered him.
Ah. You see Turing’s suicide as entirely disconnected to his abuse at the hands of the government?
As for scarcely different - Churchill is an idol to the current government, and their regressive policies, their proposal to reintroduce the death penalty, their isolationist nationalism - all of these are things I’m sure he would support.
Unless the UK has undergone a revolution in the past 80 years, I'm afraid to say that it is still the same government. The people involved are different, but just like in a company, it doesn't matter if the C-suite changes over the years - its still the same organization.
Like a corporation, that government definitely feels bound by the obligations made by its predecessors, and, likewise, feels entitled to receive any obligations owed to it.
To argue otherwise would be to argue that debts, treaties, as well as all prior legislative and executive decisions all disappear every time you hold an election.
There are many valid criticisms of the present government including in human rights areas, but considering it to be morally culpable for the legally-sanctioned harassment of a gay man before most of its MPs were born (and before the actual PM backed his party's pro gay-marriage faction and its MPs passed a law to formally pardon people convicted of Turing's "offence") simply because it respects its predecessors' debts is absurd. And exactly the same standard is applied to corporations, which is why we don't consider German CEOs to be Nazi war criminals.
Governments are composed of people: people inherit money and associated debt but they don't inherit guilt.
If governments don't inherit guilt, why do they occasionally feel the need to apologize and compensate people for past repression? Why do other governments being up old disputes, to justify current antagonism?
The UK's recent actions towards Turing were very much not an apology, however.
Nearly all repression was the law of the land at the time it was carried out. If the German or Russian, or American government 'forgave' the ethnic groups it's predecessor mistreated, there would be an incredibly justified uproar about it (Because as the transgressor, the government should be the one asking for forgiveness, not giving it. And for two of them, it would not even a direct successor of the government responsible!)
Is there a service that lets me exchange USD for GBP that guarantees I'd get my GBP in cold, hard cash in these? Preferably newer, perhaps uncirculated?
I'm no collector, I just think it's cool that Turing is on a bank note, and I want one.
Until 23 June, likely no, since that would be confusing, they aren't actually money until then even though some will be working their way through supply chains as to be available promptly.
After that sure, they're just money, if you want to be certain to obtain one of these, particularly in mint condition you may end up paying a bit more than it's "worth" but you seemingly don't intend to spend it so that shouldn't matter.
I'm not sure if they're a thing in the US, but in many countries there are places which sell stamps, coins and notes to collectors, and here I'd expect to find at least one in a large town or city, people like that would understand what you want here, although their prices would likely be significantly higher than just going to an international airport and asking to buy a £50 note from them once they have the new kind.
A brief aside about why people won't have the old ones for long. Unlike the US, the UK actually replaces notes. Pre-Turing notes given to banks will gradually be destroyed and then in not so long the government will declare that they are no longer to be used. They don't become worthless, but shops won't take them, and then high street banks won't take them, until eventually the only place that will is the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, they will always honour the old note, since it says it is worth Fifty Pounds and they issued it, but of course all you get is a newer Fifty Pound note that still works, a fun ritual to do once maybe if you don't live too far away.
This means ordinary British people needn't have the expertise to authenticate genuine 100 year old money, none of it is valid any more - while if you find some down the back of your couch, it isn't worthless, it's just maybe not very convenient to go to Threadneedle Street if you found an archaic banknote that's now worth less than it'd cost to get there.
Also of course eventually (many years from now) the old notes will be worth more than £50 to collectors because they become rare, even though at Threadneedle Street you can only ever get £50 for them.
It’s really cool that UK puts scientists to its own money.
Most countries will go with politicians, buildings and warlords.
I have to say that it saddens me to see Darwin go. Considering that the evolution theory is still considered controversial in many places(even in advanced countries like the US) I think it was a very bold move to have him on the note.
I think the situation is different in the UK. I've never come across a person who disbelieves evolution. It would be equivalent to a flat-earther or person who genuinely thinks political figures are lizard folk.
Yeah, I mean they probably exist in the UK, but there is never an attempt to teach anything else but evolution in state schools like I believe there is in parts of the USA.
The UK does have a Creation Science Movement[0]. My partner and I unwittingly stumbled into their Genesis Expo[1] in Portsmouth the other year – we blindly walked in without noticing the building's name or any paraphernalia, just "ooh, look, fossils". Only when inside did we realise it was full AND THIS IS WHY EVOLUTION IS WRONG stuff.
> Founded in 1932 as “The Evolution Protest Movement” by a small group of Christians concerned by the propaganda that was promoting the theory of evolution as if scientifically proven
The UK has a decently high number of Jehovas Witnesses who (based on the stuff on leaflets they've put through my door) definitely don't seem to follow mainstream science on evolution.
Aye I don't deny such people exist in the UK, but if they tried to get schools to change their curriculum, they would not be given the time of day like folk in the USA.
I have been here (it's not far from where I live): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah%27s_Ark_Zoo_Farm It's certainly an experience (and the animals don't seem too bothered about the whole creationism thing)!
Plenty of the more fundamental religious believe in creationism. And many more do not actually believe in natural selection element of evolution, more evolution guided by the hand of god (at least in my experience of talking to others).
> I think it was a very bold move to have him on the note
There's a lot of wacky people with wacky ideas in the UK... but I think almost literally nobody disbelieves evolution here. It's just not a thing on anyone's radar and the small component we have of evangelical christianity is strangely quite an urban middle-class thing. I don't think it was bold at all.
I personally believe we should be doing more to promote and empower our scientists instead of shunning them for political or financial reasons. We certainly can't write a wrong long past, but we can make sure to not repeat it again.
I feel like that's like choosing your favourite child though. Both were extremely influential in their field; both have a deeply moving human story as well.
> Old paper £50 notes will still be accepted in shops for some time.
I find that amusing because I suspect that in practice not many shops accept them. It's hard for me to know because despite having lived in the UK for about half a century I've never had a £50 note.
Perhaps they have a plan to bring the new £50 notes into use. If today's cash machines only have the hardware to dispense two kinds of note they could replace the 20s with 50s. But inflation is low and cash is generally on the way out, so probably not, I would guess.
I have carried £50 notes (and accepted £50 notes when I had jobs while studying) and the only occasions I've seen them refused is when there wasn't enough change in the cash register.
Scottish and other non-English sterling is another matter. Despite being legal tender in England, smaller shops don't see it frequently enough to want to take the risk handling them.
Im like 80% sure Scottish notes are not Legal tender even in Scotland. Legal tender has a fairly narrow definition. They are accepted, and legal, but not 'legal tender'... Well that was my understanding at least. There is also no obligation for shops to accept _any_ notes as far as I know. Especially when they have no idea how to tell if they're legit (Scottish notes are incredibly rare in England and Wales).
(Not a lawyer but from my 1 module at uni) I belive that you are correct on both counts. Scottish bank notes are NOT legal tender anywhere and on one has to accept them except the issuing retail bank.[1]
So retailers can reject them for the same reason as when you see something labelled with the wrong price. The shop keeper is under no obligation to sell it to you for that price.
What you actually see is a reference for you, the customer, to initiate an offer to buy something at that price.
If the shop keeper doesn't like the look or you money or the price your offering he can reject the deal.
As far as legal tender goes that only applies to the settling of debts and a retailer could reject an offer to sell they don't like even if you do offer legal tender.
Even Bank of England copper coins are only legal tender up to something like the value of 20p. So you can't take a truck load of copper coins to your landlord to pay for rent in arrears.
I never said there was a legal obligation for shops to accept notes. My point was that most shops will generally accept £50 notes (because why would a shop refuse payment?) so long as they have the float.
The point about Scottish notes not being legal tender is a surprise. Thanks for the correction there.
A man worthy of the gesture, though I can't remember the last time I even touched money. Most bills are paid online/direct debit and I tend to use self-service at supermarkets.
I remember seeing George Galloway on a morning TV show passionately saying why Margaret Thatcher shouldn't be on any notes. At the end of the interview he was asked who was on the £5, £10, £20 notes. He had no clue. I'm sure most of us in the UK don't either.
I'm not in the UK, but surely you guys have some sort of equivalent to Gumtree/Facebook Marketplace, as well as semi-legitimate cash-only businesses and tradies that are trying to avoid tax?
Gumtree/Facebook Marketplace is still mostly cash in the UK - neither the buyer nor seller really trust the other with their bank details. Nobody is 100% sure that bank transfers are irreversible (they are, but if you complain loudly enough to the sellers bank they might mark the seller as a fraudster, ban them from banking for life, and transfer the money back to you).
Cash protects both buyers and sellers more from crazy people.
Nothing to do with cashless, most places don't accept £50 notes and cash machines often only dispense £20 (apart from airports). Using less cash will probably decrease the use further but so far the lack of £50 note usage had little to do with card payments.
> The banknote was described by Peter Sands, former chief executive of Standard Chartered bank, as the "currency of corrupt elites, of crime of all sorts and of tax evasion".
Rich coming from someone under whose leadership, money laundering was going on:
> Also during his time at the bank, Sands was harshly criticized after Standard Chartered paid New York State $340 million in 2012 to settle claims it laundered money for Iran[0]
Polymer bank notes are considered better for the environment because of durability and under the guise of recycling, but now that we know about the catastrophe of microplastics, are they really?
The volume is massive: with the most used notes lasting 3-5 years it won't be long until you have a billion plastic notes in circulation.
Textiles seem like quite an easy fix - simply require HEPA style liquids filters on every washing machine before water is sent down the drain.
The filter could be big and designed to last the life of the machine. It's far better to dispose of a single chunk of solid plastic waste than the billions of particulates that would have gone into waterways...
I wouldn't have thought that bank notes would typically turn into microplastics? They don't tend to fall apart and would be returned for incineration or recycling when they need to be replaced - you can't continue to have the money/value if it gets thrown away
That's not what I was querying. I was wondering why you thing the UK will move to the Euro? We just left the EU and even when we were in it, we kept our currency.
We have just left the EU and its going so badly that even the fishing industry have turned on it. Once the idiot politicians who sold it have been sent packing we'll apply to re-join.
Thank God we left the EU, else we would be in the EU debacle regarding vaccines. We are ahead of every member state in terms of vaccinated population. Don't take this as me supporting Boris but its definitely a good thing that we left and the fishing thing we be sorted at some point in the near future. Even if it isn't, the benefits outweigh the cons and we can now act as our own nation free of the EU's bloated bureaucracy.
What a very thorough reply. Are you saying that right now, you would rather be in the EU? Frankly, I would rather be able to go to the pub. Have some nationalistic pride (assuming you are British) and please don't encourage the discarding of our currency.
Yes, I would rather be in the EU. I never wanted to leave. Join Schengen. Join the Euro. Yes to it all! I am proud of England and to be English. I believe in England as a modern European nation.
