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Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

bankofengland.co.uk

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Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#181

Post by justin66 »

manfredo wrote: post #130
jjeaff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting elected as the first black president in a country founded on the enslavement of black people is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself.

"Founded on the enslavement of black people" is at best a misrepresentation of reality, and at worst a counterfactual statement. The bulk of the Northern states abolished slavery by 1810. The founding principles were at odds with slavery, to the point that many southerners objected to the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men are created equal. Some parts of the US did tolerate the contradiction between it…

Nothing in your lengthy comment contradicts the point you seem to think you're contradicting.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#183

Post by gerdesj »

oliveshell wrote: post #38
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be living in a bubble, fifty quid is much less than $100 and I see those notes all the time. Getting currency exchanged before a trip? They give huge bills. Buying a used phone or furniture from Craigslist? Are you going to pay with 100 twenties? New ATMs even ask you the breakdown of bill sizes you are want.

Are you just speculating, or do you live in the UK? From what I’ve heard, £50 notes are used more rarely than $100 bills are here in the US.

Can afirm. I'm a Brit with 48 years under my belt. A £50 note is a very rare beast and is almost never seen in the wild.

If it wasn't for the fact that I bought a car for about £1400 in fifties in about 1996, I have spent more $100 bills than £50 notes in my life. I have only visited the US on a few occasions for holidays.

£20s are more than enough for most things. They are not too big or thick so even £1000 is just about manageable in a wallet for a short time. Larger than say £200 at most is bank transfer stuff. We have had near instant bank transfers for years. To be honest I keep a cash float of about £100 but I am an older bloke and like to use cash sometimes. I could easily operate cashless for about 99.5% of the time. The number of transactions that I can't do with pay by bonk (NFC) or mobile banking is absolutely minimal. I only use cash in a pub out of habit to be honest.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#184

Post by justin66 »

fortran77 wrote: post #85
TuringNYC wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large number of Americans sadly even refuse to believe he is American.

He was a very popular President who was re-elected. I don't think "a large number" is accurate. Maybe a small fringe.

If you're American, I'm afraid I need to point out something you should have realized a long time ago: a large number of our countrymen are very, very stupid.

There's a lot of depressing polling-related stuff in the 2017 article below [1] but this one speaks to your comment: "42 percent of self-identified Republicans still believe that Democratic President Barack Obama was born in Kenya"

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-polling-...

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#185

Post by avar »

manfredo wrote: post #130
jjeaff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting elected as the first black president in a country founded on the enslavement of black people is a pretty impressive accomplishment in and of itself.

"Founded on the enslavement of black people" is at best a misrepresentation of reality, and at worst a counterfactual statement. The bulk of the Northern states abolished slavery by 1810. The founding principles were at odds with slavery, to the point that many southerners objected to the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men are created equal. Some parts of the US did tolerate the contradiction between it…

Reading "all men are created equal" like that is ahistorical. The Declaration of Independence asserted that at the same time as those northern states kept slaves (and would for decades to come), and natives being driven from their lands like cattle. Clearly "all men" was less inclusive than it's thought of today.

And just how long does it take to found a country? In 1789 there were around 4 million people in the US, and slavery was legal in most of the country whether measured by area, economic output or population.

Even if you take 1810 as the cutoff that's 34 years after independence. Would you say 34 years after the founding of some 20th century nation states (some of which collapsed a lot sooner than that) that it was too early to tell what principles they were founded on?

It's also a very narrow view to say that a southern state producing cotton where slavery was legal, and a northern state where slavery wasn't legal but where cotton production with southern material contributed significantly to the economy weren't both involved in slavery.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#186

Post by viraptor »

Anechoic wrote: post #80
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most consumers don’t use any of those things any longer.

Most consumers don’t use any of those things any longer. Vinyl records, yes (mostly). I'm pretty sure the other two things are still in pretty wide use. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/media/ebooks-sales-real-boo... [1] http://www.insideradio.com/who-s-listening-am-radio-by-the-n...

AM radio is actively bring phased out in some places. For example in Australia.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#187

Post by heavenlyblue »

jacquesm wrote: post #117
Throw_Away_5382 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was, not for what he did . No, he was prosecuted for having sex with other men. That is something he did. Being homosexual was never illegal.

What a crap comment, I can see why you chose to use a throwaway account. That's about the same as saying that a law against breathing would make all of us illegals because it is something that we did, rather than that breathing is a direct result of being alive as a mammal. Sex is a natural thing. If you outlaw sex then you are by definition creating criminals, and you might as well name it for what it is: a law agai…

Well, morally speaking having sex with a man went against the “morals of the time”. We changed our collective opinion since then.

Now what Ross Ulbricht did is amoral today - but are you so sure we will not change our opinion about this act in a few decades?

If people didn’t continue with their “amoral homosexuality” we could have never accepted it to be he norm. They are the heroes of their times.

In many ways, what Ulbricht had done may become a viable method of policing organisations that are “too big to be policed”.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#189

Post by elevenoh »

michaelmrose wrote: post #105
tim333 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi Nakamoto? I think Turing was recognised as a great mathematician in his day but still persecuted.

Bitcoin has mainly thus far mostly allowed for some geeks to get rich and some criminals to move around money. It's actual impact on society is best described as it wasted a bunch of electricity.

crypto-facilitated access to psychedelics alone has radically changed 10s of thousands of lives & will have deep long term societal ripples.

Re: Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note

#190

Post by buckminster »

benj111 wrote: post #151
spenczar5 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claim 1: there will be no paper money at all. Counter: obsolete things last longer than you think. Riposte: obsolete things are not used by most people. Counter-riposte: still used by many people. Counter-counter-riposte: technically, many != most. Somewhere, I think the original point was lost. This has been HN comment theater, the greatest arena of technical-yet-irrelevant correctness you can find.

Technically , I think you'll find that the new £50 notes won't be made out of paper at all. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_banknote

It's all moot anyway. Banks don't issue £50 notes and nobody accepts them.

Which is really very weird because a fifty now is only worth what a twenty was when I started work. And back then twenties were commonplace and fifties weren't especially rare.

I suspect they only exist now to facilitate sketchy payments by HMG.

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