Spend your paper £5 notes NOW: No longer legal tender after today You’ve got until the end of today to spend your old paper £5 notes before they cease to be legal tender. The individually short-lived banknotes, notorious for falling apart – particularly if left in the back pocket of your jeans after you pop them in the wash – will be replaced by the new plastic versions that have been rolled …
"Hence the 6,000 percent is correct in absolute terms but not when inflation and taxes are taken into account."
Actually the 6000% is mostly inflation; that's exactly how currencies get devalued. But, relative to inflation, different things go up or down by different amounts. Cars have got much cheaper in real terms, public transport has got more expensive.
I find the new £5 note just about ideal for the few places that still need physical money as it's much lighter than £5 in coins. I can't help feeling that before long the main uses for coins will be parking meters and the Big Issue. And the only reason for parking meters is that they are designed for the convenience of the operators, not the customers, because car parks are an inelastic good and they can get away with it.
"Bloody nuisance when you're a tourist with a phone on a non-sterling account, and your 1 GBP parking charge ends up as 2 or 3 $/euros after commission and conversion flat fee."
Likewise the many, not "few", shops which still take cash when all you want is a quid or two worth of snacks and there's an up to 85p surcharge for paying by card/phone/bonk. Do that just a few times per week and over a year it starts looking like a significant "convenience" factor some people are paying for. I suspect that cash will here for long, long time to come unless that banks and card processors massively reduce their cut of every transaction. Small local shopkeepers in particular have to have the card readers or lose trade, but they have to rent the reader, pay for insurance, spend time and money on certification, wait ages for repairs when they break and then the bank takes a cut too.
"I suspect that cash will here for long, long time to come unless that banks and card processors massively reduce their cut of every transaction. "It's amazing how often you can hustle for a discount when you pay by "poor people's credit" (cash).
Back when cheques were the thing I used to write cash cheques for local use. A gratifying number either remained in circulation, or got lost each year.
I'm still waiting for all those up in arms about the use of tallow in the production of the notes to realise just how many other day to day objects rely on similar catalysts and production methods.
The clothes they're wearing. The car they drive in (or bus, or train). The chair they're sitting on. The machine that makes the Quorn mince...
Don't get me wrong, there are some very conscientious people who do the research and successfully navigate the pitfalls. But they tend to do it quietly and not make a song and dance about infringing their beliefs.
Whilst there have been repeated suggestions that petroleum might have an abiogenic origin, including by famous scientists such as Dmitri Mendeleev and Thomas Gold; the widespread presence of porphyrins in petroleum suggests the vast majority of Earth's oil comes from algae and zooplankton. There are tiny amounts of hydrocarbons here on Earth that may have been formed by processes such as serpentinisation or the decomposition of carbonates, none have unequivocally been proven to be abiogenic.
That doesn't exclude petroleum-like compounds forming on Titan and elsewhere in the Solar System through abiogenic processes such as UV polymerisation of methane. And of course, the discovery of methane plumes in the Martian atmosphere is most probably due to serpentinisation of a warm, olivine-rich Mantle by water and carbon dioxide.
The term 'fossil fuel' dates from the 1759 when it was used in reference to the novel process of smelting iron using coal (which occasionally contains obvious plant matter), so it long predates marketing.
The Bank of England will accept them (pretty much?) forever, as that's the entity who makes the "Promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of XXX".
You walk in, hand over your ancient currency, they check that it's real and hand you a crisp new one.
However, shops don't have to take older editions of currency after a relatively short changeover period.
The reason for retiring old coins and notes is because the forgers eventually get too good at making the old designs, making it much too difficult for a normal person to spot them.
It's only the Bank of England ones that stop being legal tender - and even then, if you go to your own bank, or the Bank of England themselves, they will exchange or pay in the current paper notes.
However, there's still loads of paper £5 notes that will still be valid, as RBS, Clydesdale, Bank of Scotland, etc. notes will still be in circulation. The fact that a load of people in England have issues with them doesn't change that.
At no point did I say the notes were legal tender. I said valid exactly for that purpose.
The point is that you won't be bale to spend paper Bank of England £5 notes - but you can spend other banks ones. The story doesn't mention that there are other perfectly acceptable £5 notes in use in the UK.
"... local High Street shops and banks no longer have to take them after today."
Logal High Street shops don't have to take any money they don't want to. No Fifties, No Scottish Money, No Coppers --- they could even refuse to serve people who want to pay in cash. Or even Stirling.
Perhaps your local corner shop would have to take it if you were paying your newspaper bill or settling some other account. Legal tender is that which, when offered, must be taken towards settlement of a debt. So perhaps a restaurant like Pizza Express, where you sort-of incur a debt before paying? But not Nandos, where they make you pay up front, to make sure you can't object to the bill.
PS: Handy hint: if you get you and your date a McDonalds Peri-Peri chicken wrap meal each, and set fire to a twenty, it's exactly like eating at Nandos.
Who knew you folks were having such problems with your actual cash? That's not saying that the US Dollar is indestructible, it needs to be replaced every so often,, but since it's not actually paper, seems to last for quite a while. There would be mass confusion here in the States if they came out with some new-fangled money, probably a bit (a shitload) of outrage from the lunatic fringe. I fear the day when the Treasury does away with the penny. There will be riots in the streets. At least out in the hinterlands where Trump reigns supreme.
You think doing away with the penny will cause riots.
There are some places (Australia? Canada?) that round up or down to eliminate change entirely. If it's x.50 or over, you get an extra dollar back If it's under, you get only the dollar amount, no change. The theory is that it evens out in the end (which it probably does).
Me? I dump my change in the tips jar, if there is one.
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"Without the penny what else would I give my chauffeur for his Christmas bonus?"
My dear boy, I've been using hearty handshakes for years. Mind you since cutting his bonus I have been informed by my accountant that the fuel economy on the old Rolls has dropped to 0.5mpg.
Ive had the mechanic take a look at it and he thought it might be the heavy alloy wheels. Nice chap, he replaced them with modern light weight steel wheels for free. He even recycled the old wheels for free. He came highly recommended via the chauffeur. An Irish sounding chap with a large collection of horses. Lives in a caravan you know. He's even offered to have his lads mow the lawn for me and check the roof on my country pile. Hard working chaps, I told them I was going away for a jaunt to Monaco for two weeks. No problem they said, you'll be done by the time you get back. Marvellous.
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There are some places (Australia? Canada?) that round up or down to eliminate change entirely. If it's x.50 or over, you get an extra dollar back If it's under, you get only the dollar amount, no change. The theory is that it evens out in the end (which it probably does).
Rounding to the nearest dollar?!
In Australia we round to 5c for cash transactions, because that is the smallest denomination in our coinage. In Canada it is also 5c.
"Our money isn't made out of paper. It's a paper/cotton mix."Paper:
"A substance composed of fibres interlaced into a compact web, made (usually in the form of a thin flexible sheet, most commonly white) from various fibrous materials, as linen and cotton rags, straw, wood, certain grasses, etc., which are macerated into a pulp, dried, and pressed (and subjected to various other processes, as bleaching, colouring, sizing, etc., according to the intended use)..."
IOW your money is (was) definitely made out of paper.
US currency doesn't last nearly as long as you think. According to the mint these are the average lifetimes:
A $1 bill lasts 18 months; $5 bill, two years; $10 bill, three years; $20 bill, four years; and $50 and $100 bills, nine years. Bills that get worn out from everyday use are taken out of circulation and replaced.
Well done environmentalists. From one byproduct of an existing industry to a product responsible for widespread deforestation and habitat destruction.
Nailed it.
When will these vegan dreadlock toting flip flop wearing tree huggers think of the trees?
If they would only eat a steak for the B vitamins once in a while they'd think more clearly.
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