First you chemically castrate person, make him depressed and make him kill himself. Then some 60 years later make money with him. It's Ironic.
New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
71–80 of 171 posts
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#72Cool 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 issu…
>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…
$100 bills are routinely checked in the US, but almost never refused IME.
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#73Polymer 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.
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
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#74It’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.
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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. [0] https://csm.org.uk/ > Founded in 1932 as “The Evolution Protest Movement” by a…
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.
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see this happening. 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.
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#77Earlier 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. 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 do…
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.
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.
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#78Earlier 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. 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 do…
> 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€.
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#79It’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.
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)!
Re: New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was inaccurate about it for those that know little about Turing's life
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 sa…
Just out of curiosity, is Alan Turing from Cryptonomicon at all recognizable?