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New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

bbc.co.uk

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Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#121

Post by tialaramex »

mauvehaus wrote: post #88

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.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#122

Post by person_of_color »

strong_opinions wrote: post #101
beforeolives wrote: post #21

Looking at the dates in the article - when Turing was convicted in 1952 the reigning monarch was... Elizabeth II, just like now. That's a long time.

She's a very old woman now and will be dead soon enough. It would be nice if that precipitated the end of the monarchy here. Depose them, seize all their land and other assets, it's only fair. Useless scroungers, the lot of them.

Name checks out. However, like me, you will receive downvotes for your overly contrarian opinions.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#123

Post by uncledave »

strong_opinions wrote: post #101
beforeolives wrote: post #21

Looking at the dates in the article - when Turing was convicted in 1952 the reigning monarch was... Elizabeth II, just like now. That's a long time.

She's a very old woman now and will be dead soon enough. It would be nice if that precipitated the end of the monarchy here. Depose them, seize all their land and other assets, it's only fair. Useless scroungers, the lot of them.

This is a growing sentiment with the pedophilia scandals and the wealth divide in the UK. I’m on the side of disposing of them.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#124

Post by noisy_boy »

> 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]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sands_(banker)

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#125

Post by keenreed »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #33
mrtksn wrote: post #28

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.

Try evolutionary psychology or gene evolution theory. UK is full of nutjobs.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#126

Post by tialaramex »

eigenket wrote: post #87
hntrader wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was inaccurate about it for those that know little about Turing's life

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 t…

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.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#127

Post by notahacker »

luckylion wrote: post #78
notahacker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#128

Post by notahacker »

DocTomoe wrote: post #100
tialaramex wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A UK quirk is that banknotes are not legal tender in Scotland, so you might still need a bag of coins in that restaurant :)

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#129

Post by jamesgreenleaf »

beforeolives wrote: post #21

Looking at the dates in the article - when Turing was convicted in 1952 the reigning monarch was... Elizabeth II, just like now. That's a long time.

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.

Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed

#130

Post by StavrosK »

gambiting wrote: post #70
dblooman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very few places accept them 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…

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 sudden…

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.
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