"There is no-one important on the back of a £20 note." Yup - only JMW Turner, Britain's greatest and most prolific painters. Also featured on the note is 'The Fighting Temeraire', one of his most famous paintings. This ship fought at Trafalgar with Nelson in 1805. You may remember James Bond and Q sitting together and discussing the ship in the film 'Skyfall.'
The major difference is that they're all different _sizes_ . Whereas dollar bills, whatever the denomination, are all exactly the same size. It is much easier to shortchange people.
The £1 coin is now multi sided. The £1 before decimalisation was made up of 20 shillings with each shilling being made up of 12 pence (pennies). Two shillings was known as a Florin and two shillings and 6 pence was also a coin known as half a crown (a crown was 5 shillings). Half a shilling (6 pence) was known as a tanner and half of that (3 pence) was known as thruppence. Half a penny was known as a ha'penny (pronounced hape knee) and a quarter of a penny was a farthing. As well as £1 that was made up of 20 shillings, there was also a Guinea which was made up of 21 shillings. Sadly I remember the old currency before we went decimalised. Of interest, the coins are all made at the Royal Mint who also mint the coins for some other countries.
@@saucygibbon56 There are two groups, two rows of two dots each, on the £10 note, three on the £20 note, and four on the £50 note, but none on the fiver. The pattern was chosen after consultation with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People).
Fun fact: if you shine a UV light on the correct side of a UK bank note, it shows a number equal to the value of the note - so a fiver shows a 5, a tenner a 10, etc.
Fun fact: you may have noticed the £ looks like an L, this is because it is for Libra Pondo which was a weight in Roman times, we may use Pound (from Pondo) but the symbol comes from Libra (also why pounds in weight has the symbol "lb"). Libra is of course associated with the scales (see star contilations) as in times gone by, goods and money were weighed to determine value. In case you did not know, the $ comes from the name Spanish Dollar or Peso - because the Spanish dominated the Americas... and it stuck...
And the Spanish in their turn took the dollar from Bohemia, who had been using it for centuries. Shakespeare refers to them a few times, often to pun with "dolour".
Having the different denominations of banknotes in different sizes and colours is very useful. Having all the notes the exact same size and colour like American dollars must create great difficulties for visually impaired people.
Hello from South Africa 🇿🇦. If you get paid in cash for a job, you would have to count it ( in front of the client /customer which could give the wrong impression), because the notes are all the same size - not sure about the colour. There could be 100's on the top and bottom with other denominations inbetween. That's why our notes are different sizes and colours.👍
The different colours saved my hide when a customer at the shop I was working at accused me of short changing her. You could clearly see that I had a blue-green note in my hand on the camera, not an orange one.
Years ago, you had to pay one penny to use public toilets, that's how "Spending a penny" became a euphemism for needing to pee. The £20 and £50 notes were upgraded last year, so now they are also made of polymer. The highest denomination note in circulation produced by the bank of England is £50, but there are Scottish £100 notes in circulation.
@@lordomacron3719 I used a Scottish £20 at my local chippy back in January. I usually end up bringing back a few Scottish notes to London each time I visit my sister's in Scotland. I've only been questioned about it twice in the last 7 years. Both times were in small family run shops. That said, I know many small local shops can be a bit fussy about it. Specially in smaller towns and villages in the southern part of England, but up north like around Newcastle, you shouldn't have any issues. I've never had a problem using Scottish notes in any of the major supermarkets, so if you do have Scottish notes in England, then they are your best bet for hassle free shopping.
@@lordomacron3719 honestly though every single shopkeeper will look at you like you just smoked a crackpipe right in his shop when you try paying with scotch notes
@@ashleytaylor7621 The Bank of England only released the new polymer £50 in the summer of 2021. Given that they were designed to last decades, I'd say it's extremely unlikely they would dump it after only 2 years.
Quid is just like "buck" for dollar. You probably wouldn't use it in a formal situation but everyone understands it. Also don't forget that you also use words like "nickel", "dime" and "quarter" for your coins, so you definitely do have slang terms for your money! Coins and notes are all different sizes and shapes so you can identify them by feel - handy for everyone but REALLY useful for people with a vision impairment. We also use the word "note" rather than "bill" - a "bill" is a check in a restaurant, or an invoice. The first Charles III coins have just gone into circulation (50p piece) and they'll gradually replace the rest over the next years or decades. All our currency is in 1/2/5, 10/20/50, and it's easy arithmetic. For example, to make 88p you need 50+20+10+5+2+1. For 88c you'd need 25+25+25+10+1+1+1, right? which is a whole extra coin. We use £2 and £1 coins a lot because we don't have £1 notes any more.
That’s what I was finding confusing with Tyler’s initial surprise that we had a nickname for pound. When Americans use a nickname for US dollars all the time. I think it comes from the same place as when some Americans go on about British accents. Then are surprised to find out they themselves have an accent, an American accent.
So the term “to spend a Penny” came from when you had to pay for public bathrooms as it cost a penny in most places (when it started) and the saying has stuck.
The expression really came into use with the introduction of coin operated locks on the cubicles in public toilets. As always, people prefer to use an euphemism rather than saying 'I need to go and pee'.
Hi Tyler, the portrait on the obverse (back) of the notes are of famous historical Britons, which is regularly changed. We also have a £50 note, but it is rarely used. The Notes also have a feature which is only visible under ultraviolet light, most shops have a lamp to check it. There are also several anti forging devices on the notes including a hologram which is quite cool. Also, the notes are of different sizes which is handy for the blind, it also includes a braille imprint.
@@brianandjillianadamson5479 Of course, thanks, I blame a brain slip at my advanced age 😶🌫😶🌫. However, the Romans defined 'Britain' as England and Wales, ignoring the bit above Hadrian's wall, and it became 'Great' Britain when Scotland came cap in hand and bankrupt in 1709 😪😪, so I could claim that technically, and historically I was correct, but that's stretching a point somewhat, so I'll accede to your point! But as the Pound Sterling is also the currency of Wales, surely there is no reason why there should not be a Welsh person represented on the notes.
Brits say "quid" due to its origins, possibly rooted in "quid pro quo" or linked to Quidhampton, a village in England with a Royal Mint paper mill. Its simplicity and distinctiveness made it popular, and it became synonymous with the pound sterling, gaining cultural significance over centuries.
Fun fact: I don't know if anyone has mentioned this but before we switched to "plastic" notes they were not made out of "paper" like the woman says in the video they were made of cotton or "cotton paper". Also she say's that pennys and 5p's are made from silver and copper and that also is not true any more.
We do use the £1 and £2 coins quite a lot especially depending where you are. Like paying for a takeaway or in other places that struggle to use card payments. Plus you use the £1 coin to use many shopping trolleys.
Yeah, fish and chips was 2 quid back when i lived up north. And a cab home from the west end was just under 3 quid in the 90's. So you always had some coins on ya for that kind of stuff.. 😎
I was looking for the Shopping trolley comment lol also I still use coins for parking machines but most of them are now changing to cards which stresses me out lol
Also working in a small town store, people bring in £2 coins frequently enough that at the end of the day there's like a good few of them in the tills. A lot of folk try to off £2 coins because they're seen as less convenient so yeah they're used a lot more than you'd think.
13:48 if you look at the coin arrangement for the 5-50, it makes up the royal coat of arms! Also, each coin has a different size/number of sides to make it easier to tell what coin it is when rooting through a purse or smh
All the notes are different sizes too to aid people with eye issues. Also, they changed to the new indestructible notes as it cost the Royal Mint billions to keep reissuing notes due to old worn out notes having to be replaced. Countries who use ‘polymer notes’ include Canada, Australia (in 1998 btw) New Zealand, Mexico, Fiji, Singapore etc.
we use the £1 (one pound) coin all the time, because we dont have a £1 note. The £2 coin is fairly new and I think it was introduced to help with vending machines. We have a ton of different names for our money and theres probably a lot of names that are local to different areas of the country, like there are for most things in Britain. Pre 1971 we had different money altogether Pounds, Shillings & Pence. There were 240 pennies to a pound. Pounds were divided into Shillings. A Shilling was worth 12 pennies and was known a a "bob". You then had a 10 Shilling note (10 bob) which was half a quid (pound). Five Shillings was a "Crown" (five shillings was often called a Dollar as I think there were once 4 dollars to a pound, though I could be wrong on that one) The next coin was the Half Crown worth 2 shillings and 6 pence, this was often called a "half a'dollar" Then there was the "2 bob bit" witch was the 2 shilling piece (A "bit" was any single coin) Then it was the Shilling (1 bob) next was the 6 penny piece (for ever known as a "Tanner") Then the 3 penny piece (the "thru'penny bit..... cockney rhyming slang for the shits) Then came the Penny, next it was the half penny ("ha'penny") and lastly the Farthing which was a quarter of a penny.....The old money system was known as LSD (no not that LSD) and was in some ways better than the decimal currency we have now, because being made up of units of 12 meant that it could be divided in more ways than the decimal system of 10 (the pound cannot be divided equally by three as there is no coin worth a third of a penny)........phew! I need a lie down after that
You could call a £20 note A Score, and a £50 note A Bullseye. They are commonly called notes here in the UK not bills. Scotland and Northern Ireland issue their own banknotes which are used alongside Engilsh notes.
A bank note is actually a promise yto pay the amount shown printed on it, like a cheque is a promise to pay the amount written on it by the person issueing, or writing it out and signing it. A bank not in the Uk has the signature of the governor of the issueing bank in Scotland or N Ireland, or the Bank of England in England.
It's so annoying as a Scotsman having to exchange our Scottish banknotes to English notes if travelling to England. I learned that hard lesson the very first time I went to London- so many shopkeepers thought my money was fake lol.
I didnt even know Scotland had its own money until a few months ago when I visited I just assumed they used the English notes because we use the England notes in wales by the way I have never heard of someone using score and bullseye before must be an England thing
So does Bristol. Busses in Bristol are happy to take Bristol bank notes, but I've never seen them be used anywhere else. I think they're a bit of a gimmick
And a 10/- note. The 50p coin came out before decimalisation to prepare us. Some shopkeepers robbed us with price conversions "god that's gone up mate!". Many didn't actually notice as inflation was worse than now.
Before we had the polymer notes, we had paper notes. The serial number for each not was on the same half of the note, this meant that if you tore it in half you could only get the same back as you started with.
The 10p, 50p and £2 coins also have loads of different pictures on the face side. These represent historical events, people or other significant things in the UK. Fun to collect. Some are extremely rare and can be worth way more than face value to collectors.
@@mikebridges7294each coin has a different part of the shield. So you need a full set 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, and 50p to make the full shield. Also some pound coins have an image of the full shield on them.
The old 10p was also the exact same size as a new £2 and two shilling Same for the old 5p being the same size as the one shilling You could spend the old 5p and 10p and one and two shillings at the same time to the values of the 5 or 10 pence after decimalisation
@@mikebridges7294 yes the shield design was actually part of a competition won if memory serves me correctly It was won by Arthur dent and lead to the shield design being known as the dent shield
There's also some slang for money - a pony = £25 and a monkey = £500. Money's also known as 'bread' which comes from rhyming slang 'bread and honey'. Before the UK was decimalised, 240 pennies = £1
One thing they missed out was that the lower denomination coins when put together form a shield. If you go back and look at the back of the coins you can see part of the shield on each one ..... a fiscal jigsaw.
Certain decimal coinage came into circulation prior to the 1971 decimalisation: I remember all hell breaking loose, back in the mid-seventies when a checkout operator in a supermarket I was working in, accepted a pre-decimal 10 shilling note, (which had been superceded in 1970 by the 50p coin,) assuming that it was a Scottish £10 note.
In my area, we used to call a £5 note a bluey. So on and so forth for the rest corresponding by colour. Colour, size, quantity of braille dimples, historical figure on the back, and of course the numerical denomination. So many ways to identify our cash.
I’m a 74 year old Briton and I think in my lifetime things have changed to the extent that when I was a child I considered people who remembered the Second World War as old, whereas at my age I realise that I must be old because I remember the pre-decimalisation currency (decimal currency came in in 1971) and I had actually passed the age of 21 when that happened. I still remember the old system of £sd to four places of decimals (my earliest job was in a Cost Office) which is one of the more useless attainments I have. It had 240 old pennies to the pound instead of 100. What I do distinctly remember is an American tourist being asked on radio at the time what he thought about our changing currency, and his reply was that he found it very confusing! I could never understand why someone from a decimal currency country like the USA would find a decimal currency system confusing! Perhaps you had to be American?
When I was at junior school, 'doing sums' with money was the bane of my life. We usually worked in pounds, shillings, pence (pennies), halfpenny and farthings. Addition and multiplication were bad enough but long division was a nightmare. Find the remainder of dividing £132, 3 shillings and sixpence halfpenny by 9.
@@johnsharp6618 You Forgot the old Guinea coin value £1. 1/- (£1.05p) Bloodstock (Horses) are sold in Guineas still today. Also the gold Sovereign (£1) and half Sovereign (10/- = 50p) but now worth the current gold bullion value plus a premium depending on condition and year. The Sovereign weighs 1 troy oz. or should. (1 troy oz. = 1/20 lb. not 1/16). The first banknote was the old white £5 just under in A4 size and only printed on the face in black. One had to write one's name on back when spending where not known as were very easy to counterfeit.
Stirling I think came a little later. This from two Scottish brothers called Stirling who invented Stirling Silver. Pure silver is very soft. The Stirling brothers produced a much harder and more useful material by adding a little copper to the Silver. Stirling Silver is 92.5% silver.
The term 'pound sterling' came from the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon coin known as a sterling (probably meaning 'little star'), a pound weight of which was known as a pound.
When I visit the States, where all the notes are the same size and colour, I had to look carefully at each one to make sure I gave the right amount to pay for something.
18:44 is because for public toilets you often have to pay to use them like at the beach on Weston Super Mare and it used to be 1 penny. In 1851 the Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London. The refreshment rooms featured public conveniences for which a small charge was made. By the time the exhibition closed over 800,000 visitors had paid more than £2,000 for use of the facilities. And so was born the concept of ‘spending a penny’ to use the loo.
13:09 Ah a random £2 coin and the 'shield set'. You will still see the the others in circulation, but the £1 coins had a major design change and are no longer accepted. So you are less likely to see that one anymore. They have a silver centre like the £2 coin now, but still occasionally see the old ones when customers try to hand them over. The image designs will change on coins and are still accepted.
The pound symbol (£) derives from it resembling a stylised "L", from the old system of referring to pounds, shillings and pence (LSD) which is from the Roman Livre, Sesterti and Denari. A shilling was equilvalent to 5 pence (5p) and was written as 1/- (like on the Mad Hatter's hat from Alice in Wonderland). Quid is from the Latin (as in 'quid pro quo') meaning "something" or "the essence of". A guinea was very roughly equivalent to a pound, named because it was made from West African gold. It's value was between 20 to 30 shillings (depending on the value of gold). Guineas where used for luxury items; racehorses are still valued in guineas (being £1.05 for each guinea) as are the prizes in horse races. The extra £0.05 was theoretically the seller's commission.
The Latin word for pound is "Libra". "Livre" is French, not Roman, and is used occasionally to mean 500 grams (confusing, since a pound in the US and UK is 453.6 grams). But they also refer to the UK currency as "La Livre Sterling".
@avaggdu1 In the LSD system a shilling is 12 pence and 20 shillings is a pound. After introducing the new/decimal penny the kept the 20 shillings in a pound thus the shilling became 5 new pennies,
Some public toilets used to have a slot on the door, you would have to put a penny in the slot to open the door to use a toilet, hence spending a penny was the same as saying going to the loo. Nowadays some have a barrier you have to pay to get through and now costs 20p 30p 50p.
"Spending a penny" comes from the days when public toilets were not free to use. You used to have to pay 1 penny to use them (the door had a coin operated lock). The money used to go towards keeping the toilets clean and in good condition.
18:48 a lot of old public toilets used to be pay to enter, which was officiallly used to support the maintenance of them. Early ones had the entrance fee as 1p and it bacame a euphemism because of Victorian sensibilities.
I think a big thing with the £1 and £2 coins being used commonly vs the dollar coin is there just isn't a £1 note like there is for a dollar, the smallest note is £5 which is quite a bit of money and many small transactions are for less. And generally isn't that common to round up and say keep the change when paying, especially as tipping isn't that common and at pubs, cafes, etc. often pay upfront per drink/item at a time rather than have a tab so lots of small transactions rather than 1 big one.
youll also occasionally get people who still also call 50p coins 10 bob. A 'bob' was the slang word for a Shilling, which was worth 12 old pennies. Following decimilisation in 1971, a Shilling was worth 5 new pence. The old 'ten bob note' (10 shillings) was the equivalent of 5 Florins, or 4 Half Crowns, or 2 Crowns. After decimilisation, it was worth 50p
British notes differ in size and colour to help those who are partially sighted differentiate between each note. The same way as each coin differs in size and shape. Also the new notes have braille on them. It will take time for new notes and coins to enter circulation with King Charles on however, new 50 pence coins with Charles on the reverse have started to enter circulation.
Hi NeilC. You are 100% right but I would also add that different appearances (sizes / colours) also help anti-counterfeiting efforts. Moreover, even for the perfectly-sighted, they help us avoid simple errors. Cheers.
7:47 the reason for them being different sizes and having a slightly different texture to them is so that visually impaired and blind people can identify which note is which
Sometimes folk (mostly from London) use rhyming slang for their money, for example: A Nicker or an Alan whicker ( a nicker can be substituted for quid) is a pound, a Lady Gerdiver is £5 a Big Ben is £10, a score is £20, a Pony (short form of pony and trap) is 25, a Bullseye is £50, a Ton or Century is £100, a Monkey is £500, a Grand is a £1000, there are many more, but these are the common phrases used. Having no money, we would say I'm Skint or they are Skint, same as broke.
@@ajones684 I'm not sure how the Fed does things so bill might sense linguistically, but the reason we call them "notes" in the UK is because it's shorthand for "promissory notes". In the olden days the Bank of England upheld the promise written on every note by letting you walk into the building and asking to exchange the Chief Treasurers' promises for their value in gold - when we left the gold standard in 1931 the promise was no longer backed by gold but by securities (i.e. gilts) but the promise is still upheld (any notes out of circulation, or damaged notes, can be exchanged for good current notes).
Actually, the official name for all us paper currency is notes, not bills. Bills is a slang term. Go to the federal reserve website, and you’ll see they refer to their money as the “$100 note” or the “$20 note”. Of course, on the money itself it also says “Federal Reserve Note”. Nowhere will you see a reference to bills in official US government documentation.
Quid comes from the name of the paper mill that provided the paper for the Bank of England's original notes (c1724). The mill is called The Quidhampton Mill at Overton in Hampshire. It's still there now. Quid became a nickname for a pound taken from the name of the mill.
That's one supposed derivation, another is that it comes from the Latin phrase "quid pro quo", quid meaning something... The full phrase being 'something for something' or a fair exchange of goods and services!
@@Tarantio1983 I'm aware of that but it is a bit contrived to be historical and grand whereas it is more likely to be simple. As all things in life, simplest things first. The mill's connection to the BoE and the de Portal family settles it for me. The two 'quids' is coincidental. 😄
A quid is a block of tobacco used in pipes, and early pound notes were massive and had to be folded up in your wallet, so it was like a quid of tobacco. I very much doubt that market traders knew much Latin or cared about ancient printers.
We used to have a £1 note, when are bank notes were made out of paper, but the £1 note used to rip quite easily, so on 21st April 1983 the £1 note was changed into the £1 coin, and for some reason in 1998 they introduced the £2 coin. The 20 pence coin was introduced on the 9th June 1982. The £1 £2 coins are used on a daily basis.
The 20 p came out with the others before 'D' day as the change was known as (not legal tender until) but changed size/shape that year. As has the size of the 5 p 10 p and 50 p all gotten smaller. The 5 and 10 were the same size and weight as the 1/- and 2/- originally so could be kept in circulation together so vending machines could be changed over time and paid in to banks bagged together as £5 silver. The old £sd coins slowly withdrawn before the size change as became underweight or damaged.
@@mrpotnoodle4160 Yes. When I left school I worked in a pet/garden shop, and lots of things were priced ending in 1/2p. I also remember the dog license being 37 1/2 p.
Pence is instead of saying Penny's, Quid is a slang term for Pound or Pound's for more than 1 pound. When my parents and grandparents were young, we had coins that are no longer used today like the old Penny (or Ship Penny), Halfpenny, Farthing, Threepence, Sixpence, Half Sixpence, Shilling, Crown, Half Crown, Florin, The One Pound was a Huge Note not a coin, and the coins were much bigger than they are now and different shapes these were changed over the years mainly to prevent forgery and the fact that some were pre Decimal and others Post Decimal coinage
20:16 The Bank of England notes are the main notes, but the Scottish and Northern Irish ones are more commonly used just their respective countries, so if you used an Northern Irish or Scottish note in England you might get a strange look the same if you used a Scottish note in Northern Ireland, but if you used an English note in NI or Scotland it wouldn't get a question
The Pound (£) is the oldest currency in the World still in use. It started 750 AD - 800 AD in England. The first Pound coin was in 1489 AD under the reign of Henry VII. The Penny dates back to the 9th century in England too. 🏴🇬🇧🇺🇸
@@Paul-hl8yg the pound and denari come from the romams and as i just stated the pence actually stands for denari so yes yes we still use pounds and denari to thus day which is roman currency that they brought to england.... Was that really that hard to understand?
@@Paul-hl8yg the pound coin youre talking about is sterling pound whixh yes is the british currency but it didnt take over the roman pound it just added different value the same thing that happens to everysingle currency, also if you think that the currency changes just because its looks different then how come we still call our 1p 2p 5p 10p 20p 50p pence? Theyre not pence? A pence is 1/12 of a shilling and a shilling is 1/20 of a pound but yet its still pence and pounds the value and the design may have changed but its still pence the same currency we have used for over 1000 years. I think if you dont truly know your history you shouldnt talk on such matters...
There is actually such a thing as a £100 note, but only in Scotland. The Bank of England doesn't make any £100 notes, and even in Scotland they're pretty rare as far as I'm aware.
Can confirm. You can use them in a shop, but likely they will go and get the manager over to confirm it’s okay. Never tried to use one in England but I guess theoretically it’s possible? Unlikely they will accept it though.
@IanDarley Not according to the Bank of England; only Royal Mint coins and Bank of England banknotes are legal tender in England and Wales. Shops do not have to accept Scottish or Northern Irish notes as payment and customers can refuse them in their change.
17:14 The £5 note, £2 coin, and £1 coin are used a lot. We do not have a £1 note (though we used to before I was born) so yeah. That coin is used lots. Even in physical things like lockers, coin machines, and trolleys.
Quid means pound. Our old pounds ( Roman librum...lb) were a physical weight equivalent of cash. Lbs are still used as a weight in cooking. The term 'quid' comes from the Latin phrase Quid Pro Quo, meaning something for something, as in an exchange. Our note currency is a bearer note that is exchangabke for the same calue in gold (in theory) so it is something for something, or a Quid (pro quo, but we don't bother saying that)
You can actually get £5 coins that are issued for special occasions but you'd have to order or specifically buy one from a bank or through mail order. Most people normally save them although they are legal tender and can be spent. Spend a penny relates to the charge to access public toilets 40+ years ago when you'd put a penny in the cubicle door to give you access.
And now you'd be lucky if it were merely a penny to get into they damned toilets. Some places 20p, I've seen some charging £1. If you find yourself at such a toilet please hold the door/gate open for anyone behind because it's fucking ridiculous.
The £20 and £50 notes have now also been replaced with plastic versions and the old paper ones went out of circulation at the end of last year. The new notes with King Charles have been released as designs but won't go into full circulation until next year and even then the versions with the Queen on will still be legal tender for some time after that.
The pence denominations was driven by the pricing of common goods. If an item is £2.59 you give the retailer £3 and you get back 41p for example. You start to accumulate all this change. This change can be made up of whatever the retailer gives you. Over time you just end up with all these small coins which becomes a pain in the neck. I have a plastic tub full of low value coins and I think a lot of people do too.
It allows for the minimum possible coins with change without being overbearing. 5+2+2 = 9, 3 coins vs 5+1+1+1+1, 5 coins, also all money goes 1, 2, 5, 1(0), 2(0), 5(0), 1(.00), 2(.00), 5(.00), 1(0.00), 2(0.00), 5(0.00) to allow for this.
I use them to play poker with friends. Mostly 1p and 2p. It’s not much but playing with real money as chips does make it more enjoyable. But really we are just moving around small change between us no one ever actually spends their ‘winnings’ it just gets used next we play.
I want to mention a few things, in some areas cash is still popular as the contactless payment requires a Wi-Fi or internet signal and in some places it’s very difficult to get any phone signal. Some shops offer cash back as there’s not so many bank branches around in rural areas like there used to be. Cash back is handy as the shops are not necessarily keeping extra money on site as it were. In Switzerland you can get a 1000 Franc note and use it but a few places might be reluctant to accept it has such a high value. American money seems a bit like monopoly stuff and it’s a bit weird to thank many folk live on less than 1$ a day in some places. The bank notes will change but it’s not immediate, the images for money and stamps are stock ones and will be agreed before being issued. In practice the notes are legal tender so no problem there, there’s also the associated industry of machines taking and issuing notes. The features built in have to be included in any update that the machine dispensers have. Not much changes straight away but some changes are more important than others, all politicians have to swear their allegiance to The Monarch. The day to day stuff is automatic. There used to ships that came to the UK with goods from across the globe and some of their phrases probably got absorbed into daily life. I personally keep a small amount of coins to the value of around £5 so I can buy milk and a jar of instant coffee. If I have any thing over it goes in a money bag and I pay it into a Magic Money machine at my bank, I have a contactless card with around £20 and use that to avoid too much change. The different sizes are supposed to represent their value but with the 1p coin and 5P you would have a job to know. There was a time you went to a public toilet and inserted a penny so you could use the cubicle,so that’s probably where that came from. The Red phone boxes used to accept a 2p or 10p coin and that’s why we had them. 2p for local and 10 for elsewhere. You can check this out on TH-cam.
1p and 2p coins were awesome as a kid as we used to go to the shop and get mix ups (bags of small sweets) for like 5p, 10p, 20p etc so you'd save them up and get a small bag of sweets on the way to or from school. That changed it senior school though as then sweets were no longer 1p each and went quickly over like 5 years to like 5p each. Prob alot more now.
One of the bad things about having polymer notes is how they are difficult to fold, they’ve been known to spring out of you wallet or your hand and then float off into oblivion…..
There is no £1 or £2 bank notes, so the coins are very much used. I didn't hear it in the video but Alan Turing is on the £50 note. So Winston Churchill for £5, Jane Austin for £10, JMW Turner for £20 and Alan Turing for £50.
I'm not the only one who was baffled when he said his grandad gives him £50 in a birthday card, right? I literally said "You toff bastard" out loud when he said that
Thays what my nan gave all her grandkids for birthday in the 90's. 500 Kroner. My mum got 1000 kroner like the rest of her siblings.. And we're middle class. Nothing fancy going on there.. 😁
@@ebbhead20 Remember the cost of living differentials too. When I went to Denmark in the late eighties most things were at least 40% or 50% more but.....................earnings there compensated for it. Similar or worse was in Norway etc.......I bought a Burger there, in Andøya in '87, and it was more than £8.00, the same in the UK back then was between £1 and £2.
At 3:46 The word "quid" comes from the Latin phrase "quid pro quo" ("what for what") or an exchange of something for something. Also, "nicker" can be used instead of pound; i.e., "a nicker" is £1 or "five nicker" is £5. Moreover, "one pound" used to refer to one pound (lb) of silver (Sterling), which was originally divided into 240 pieces called pennies. And there used to be 12 silver pennies to a shilling, and obviously 20 shillings was a pound of silver. Before decimalisation in 1971, a two-shilling coin (24 pennies) was known as a "Florin" and a two-and-a-half shilling coin (30 pennies) was known as "Half-a-Crown" or "Half-a-Dollar," with a five-shilling coin (60 pennies) referred to as a "Crown" or a "Dollar," since at the time (1930s and 1940s) £1 was equal to US $4.
I grew up in Scotland,i think our money is pretty straight forward for the most part,we used to have a half pence and they did away with that.Spending a penny,means going to the toilet,they are probably meaning that a while back,you used to have to put a coin in the door of a public bathroom to use the toilet,just like some places you have to put a quarter in the shopping cart at certain grocery stores and you have to bring the cart back to get your quarter back,but you didn't get your coin back at the public bathroom.There is some parts of England that will tell you they won't except our Scottish money and you pretty much have to fight with them and tell them it's legal tender and you need to accept it,they don't think Scottish money is real currency,thanks again for your video Tyler,made me think of home.
I like these guys a lot better than that last American couple who end up asking the viewer questions because they aren't experienced enough to know the answers.
They are annoying to many Brits though because of their lacking knowledge of their own money. "There's no note bigger than a £50 note." Well there's the £100 note, still in circulation and printed by some Scottish Banks for a start (the English version was not in circulation for that long but there was one).
I can't believe they don't know why spend a penny is an unknown origin to them 🤣. It's because it used to cost 1p to use a public toilet, obv to pay the cleaner or person who looks after them. Cost me 30p in Leeds bus station the other week though😳
@@Mathemagical55 I'm not surprised anyone young doesn't know about using an old penny for a public loo....and they seem perfectly intelligent to me....harsh... 😄
The first time I used dollars when I was 26, I couldn't tell the difference between the notes. To this day, I'm convinced I gave someone a 20 instead of a $1 note and they took it and said nowt.
First time I went to the States at 13, I was with my Gran. I was basically there to convert prices to pounds for her (I could do it on the hoof), so she knew how much things were costing. It was still a fun holiday.
Apparently the paper used in all bills is the same...I heard that forgers simply washed off the ink from smaller bills and reprinted them at a higher denomination
One critique. Scottish and Northern Irish bank notes are actually not legal tender in England, and English notes are not classed as legal tender in Scotland and Northern Ireland. What they are is 'legal currency', which is something different. It's sort of like a multi-currency union, but not exactly official. It means they can be accepted, but it is at the discretion of the vendor or individual.
Many of our prices in England end at 99p so if you buy a magazine at £4.99 you would use 4 one pound coins, a 50p coin and a combination of 10p or 20p coins to get the £4.90 then use a 5p and 2p or 1p coins to make up the 9 pence which means that you don't end up with lots of pennies in your coin purse.
I remember when we used to have 1 pound notes. I got a small windfall, and just to be cheeky (I was a kid) I went into the bank and asked for £250 in pound notes. Felt great lol
Few points: All the notes they showed are Bank of England notes, which is the most used in England and Wales. In Scotland, we also have notes from the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland (separate banks, not a typing error) and the Clydesdale Bank. In Northern Ireland there's notes Danske Bank and one or two other that I don't remember the names of at the moment. All of them are Sterling, which is the currency, and are legal tender across all of the U.K. However, it's really, really, reaaaaaaaalllllllly f****** common for people in England to be completely unaware of any of banks other than the Bank of England, and to treat any notes from a Sterling currency bank other than the Bank of England as being fake note (I'm from Scotland and have family in England. This thing with the notes is so, f******, annoying). You'll find that all notes are readily accepted in Scotland, and although I've never been to Northern or Wales, I used to work retail and in pubs for years and I've been told plenty of times by folk from those countries that they know about Scottish and Northern Irish money and readily accept them without any issues. This thing with the notes also happens outside of the U.K. Twice while abroad I've had Royal Bank of Scotland notes and have tried to change them to the local currency and I was rejected because they weren't "British notes", even though they LITERALLY ARE AND STERLING JUST THE SAME AS THE BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES. * sigh *
When i worked in a pub as a student, the landlady told us that Scottish notes and coins were valid currency, which we could accept. Manx coins from the Ilse of Man, was not legal tender so we couldn't accept it. Never saw currency from Northern Ireland, but I'd probably have checked. I can't remember about currency from the Channel Islands. I have seen the odd coins from Guernsey about 30 years ago, but I don't know if it's legal tender or not.
@@Rhianalanthula Manx money isn't sterling, it's a separate currency which has its value pegged to the value of sterling. The Isle of Man is not part of the UK.
@@tmac160 Bank of England notes are legal tender in England and Wales. No other banknotes are. The only money legal tender for any amount in the UK are coins over £1 issued by the Royal Mint
Confusingly, some of the Northern Irish notes are issued by the Bank of Ireland UK plc and these are headed "Bank of Ireland", giving the misleading impression that they might originate from the Republic of Ireland.
The old "paper" money was not actually paper. It was made from cotton pulp rather than wood pulp like normal paper. The colours used for each note are unique to the Bank of England so you won't find these exact colours on anything else and also although the ink used is dry to the touch it has unique properties that mean it never actually fully dries out. Finally, a couple of fun facts. There is a £1 million hand written bank note on display at the Bank of England museum which is technically legal tender and Queen Elizabeth II is the first British Monarch to have their portrait feature on our Bank notes.
Not sure if anyone has already mentioned this but (and you see it on the shot of all the coins together) that all the coins together as shown in the video on the back forms a shield - have a look at it! - they also didn't mention that the newer, plastic money (and the £20 is now plastic too) has braille dots for the visually impaired too.
I live down South and a lot of shops refuse to take Scottish notes, banks usually will but won’t give them out to other customers. Some will exchange them.
I was once travelling to the USA and changed £100 into US$ at Chicago O'Hare. Back then, it should have given me $159 plus some small change. The American teller counted out $155 and then was supposed to count out the final 4 $1 bills but instead didn't look properly and gave me 4 more $10 bills. I didn't notice at all because I was jet lagged and she was counting quickly. When I got to my final destination, I looked properly and realised the exchange rate was VERY much in my favour for the time - $195 for £100!
Fun Fact: Since Scotland and North Ireland use their own Pound, the Bank of England issues £100 Million Notes, which not only don't have the Queen, but are also considered Legal Tender.
"Spending a penny" dates from many years ago, when public toilets had locks which required you to insert a penny coin into them before you could open the door to enter. Also, they are wrong about being able to use Scottish or Northern Irish notes in England, it used to be acceptable to use Scottish notes, but is no longer, and shops in England have never accepted Northern Irish notes (As I know from personal experience, having travelled between Northern Ireland and England regulary at one time) Any Bank will exchange the notes for English ones however.
I've never had a problem using Scottish notes in England to this day. Being a Scotsman living in the south of England, my family down here gets Scottish notes in cards and we get them from visiting family in Scotland. Younger cashiers sometimes need a supervisor/manager to 'help' them but they always accept them, so your point on that is not correct. N.Irish notes though, are generally not accepted on the Mainland at all.
16:53 - "a lot of this is digital now" - this is the main reason why they got rid of the £100 note, Also burning money is not illegal in the UK (defacing it is though!) The band KLF famously burnt £1M back in 1994. As for the coins - they showed the layout of the coins that forms a shield. Also worth noting that only notes issued by the Bank of England are considered "legal tender" (other UK banks that issue their own notes do so under the Bank Charter). Coins are issued by the Royal Mint and they make local variations and special editions on the £1 & £2 coins. Also worth noting that coins from Guernsey, Jersey & Isle of Man (Sterling) are often used interchangeably, although not officially "legal tender" in the UK.
Err no, that’s not why we got rid of the £100 note - until WW2 the Bank of England issued notes from ten shillings up to one thousand pounds, but because of the Nazi’s Operation Bernhard counterfeiting scheme (when they tried to undermine the British economy by producing floods of fake money, though they never really launched the scheme - they eventually used the fakes to pay spies), and all Bank of England notes larger than £5 were withdrawn in 1946. Larger notes were reintroduced over subsequent decades, £10 in 1960, £20 in 1970, £50 in 1980, but we never had the need for larger notes again. The Bank of England does print higher value notes, £1,000,000 and £100,000,000, but only for internal use to represent and cover the value of the money issued by the various Scottish and Northern Irish banks.
21:45 Some shops like the Chippy only accept cash or if your only spending £2 or something then we will use cash as some card machines only allow a £3 minimum but other than that people tend to just use their bank card
£20 notes have been updated since that video. Charles currency hasn't appeared yet. Another security feature on top of the plastic windowed notes and holograms, they also have elements that light up under a UV light. You were correct, the different sizes of the notes are so that the sight impaired can easily differentiate the notes and they also have braille markings. She was wrong btw, the copper coloured coins are now steel, as a magnet would demonstrate. The newer 2 colour £1 coins were brought in as the old ones were so easy to counterfeit, it was thought that at one point, almost 50% of those in circulation were fake. Scottish money is not technically legal tender in England, but there is a standing agreement between the banks to exchange them. Never underestimate the number of names for British money. People of a certain age may still use terms from pre-decimalisation i.e. 5p can be called a shilling, or a bob. 50p is 10 bob etc. 10p is 2 bob, or a florin, but to be fair, you're likely to confuse anyone under 50 with those terms. Fortunately many other coins no longer exist, so they're unlikely to be confused by a tanner etc.
The only Scottish notes that are legal in England have the word 'Sterling' on them. Scotland have their own notes without it on. They are not legal tender in England.
"Why are coins 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1?" Because it's _the minimum set of denominations that permit any fraction of 100 pence to be represented by the smallest number of coins._ It's the most efficient the system can be.
The Scottish and NI notes are legal tender everywhere in the UK but a lot of shops in England are reluctant to accept them because they're unfamiliar with them. Probably worried about forgeries. NI notes are more of a problem because there are several banks in Northern Ireland with the right to issue notes (Ulster Bank, Bank of Ireland, Danske Bank, etc.) and they all use different designs. There's only one type of Scottish note. It was more difficult when the Republic of Ireland used the Irish Pound (Punt), as many people in England thought the NI notes were Irish currency. Since the RoI adopted the Euro, acceptance of NI notes in England has improved a bit.
The reason is that they require a different line on a cash form for banking and people are lazy . Added to that people don't know enough about the other notes to identify them clearly.
uk banknotes are a world away from american banknotes the uk changes there coins and notes regularly but america rarely dose just generally better looking
Hi, I used to go to the States in the 70's when I was a student and I remember 25 cents being referred to as 2 bits. Also, when I was a kid public conveniences (toilets) needed 1 penny in a slot to gain access. Hence spend a penny.
If you really want to be confused, here in Scotland we have 4 different designs of notes for each denomination. 3 Scottish and the bank of England notes. We reply a lot on the colour to ID them at first glance. Northern Ireland have several of their own too. We also have £100 notes which England does not.
Fun fact: at some grocery stores, if you want a shopping cart, you have to put a pound coin in the trolly to release it from the row, you get the pound back when you return it, so you can't be lazy and just leave it anywhere 😉
The different sizes help visually impaired people to tell which note is what value, the new polymer notes also have the braille number relating to that value in a corner.
Actually the official cutoff date was September 2022 - paper notes can only be exchanged at a bank now. A bank in Northern Ireland (then called the Northern Bank) issued a polymer £5 note back in 2000 to celebrate the millennium - this was due to the bank being owned by the Bank of Australia at the time. I assume they are talking about bank notes issued by the Bank of England - other banks in the UK issue their own notes and both Scotland & Northern Ireland still issue a £100 note. Whilst both Sterling you will struggle to spend the notes outside of the country of issue though (legal currency vs legal tender)
The bank notes shown in the video are all Bank Of England issued sterling notes, but not everybody lives in England or uses those notes on a daily basis. In Scotland and the North of Ireland sterling currency notes are also issued by various banks and those notes circulate alongside the Bank Of England notes in those regions. Those non Bank Of England notes are generally not accepted in England. The Scottish and Northern Irish notes don't tend to feature the monarch's image. They are just as colourful as the Bank Of England notes but there is a certain inconsistency in the colours used. One bank's £5.00 note may be the same colour as another bank's £10.00 note.
There are interesting versions of pound sterling that are exclusive to specific regions, the city of Bristol for example has its own Bristol pound that is only accepted in local Bristol shops in an effort to encourage spending locally as when you are given a local note you have to spend it there or else it’s worthless similar with over seas territory’s like the Falkland islands where there are local Falkland pound notes to encourage spending locally aswell it all means standard pound sterling can come in but local notes never leave making them more wealthy from outside visitors
The first polymer series of Australian banknotes was issued between 1992 and 1996. It was the first in the world to be printed on polymer substrate instead of paper. The first denomination in the eighth series was issued on 1 September 2016.
The first polymer banknote in Australia (the $10 note) was issued in 1988 for our bicentenary. The other notes were gradually issued in the early 1990s.
@@Donizen1 Sorry, I forgot all about the $10 🥴 ~ my old grey matter is drifting off to lala lala land🥴 I still remember getting 4 lollies for one penny lol
This video only addresses the Bank of England notes; Scotland and Northern Ireland prints their own notes which have differences, but all British currency can be used anywhere in the UK. Scottish notes have wildlife on the reverse, I'm pretty sure five has rainbow trout but ten definitely has river otters. We use quid like Americans use bucks. Also, we use the term notes instead of bills. Yes, our notes are colourful and different sizes to make distinguishing easier, with the monarch's portrait on the front and significant cultural figures on the back. There are also multiple measures incorporated to make counterfeiting harder: the window they mentioned has a smaller portrait and a holographic emblem unique to each note value; a couple of lenticular holograms that change as you move them; the 'Bank of England' text is slightly proud of the note; and there is an ultraviolet note value on the front. There are other features, as well. Fifty pound notes are often a sign of either suspicion or tourist, since they are the two most common places to get them. Many places don't accept them simply because they can't afford the risk of such a high-value note being fake, regardless of their nature as legal tender. Something they get wrong is their suggestion that old money forms lose their value once they're superceded; this isn't true, they may not be legal tender anymore but you can still take them to any bank to be replaced like for like with the current equivalent, even with the old currency system used up until the mid- to late-20th century. "Spending a penny" comes from a period when fees of a few pennies were required to use public toilets.
Scotland and Northern Ireland has different notes to those in England and Wales. In England the Bank of England prints the money but in Scotland and Northern Ireland each bank bank issue there own notes.
UK coins whilst still used to pay for things are also used for vending machines - I have yet to encounter a public vending machine in the UK that takes bank notes (I have only seen note to coin conversion machines and ones that also take credit cards) - unlike in America where nearly every vending machine I encountered took dollar bills... Also in the UK a lot of shopping trolleys are locked and a pound coin is used to unlock them - thus encouraging their return (you get the pound back). On public transport you are encouraged to have the exact change for the fare.
One of the reasons why it is called pound Stirling is that it was the weight measurement of an silver Anglo Saxon coin called the Sterling.. Measuring the coins by weight was a way of checking the value was correct and not nibbled at. The Sterling is thought by some to get its namer from being the estetlings coin. But that is disputed.
"There is no-one important on the back of a £20 note." Yup - only JMW Turner, Britain's greatest and most prolific painters. Also featured on the note is 'The Fighting Temeraire', one of his most famous paintings. This ship fought at Trafalgar with Nelson in 1805. You may remember James Bond and Q sitting together and discussing the ship in the film 'Skyfall.'
That's the new £20 note, not the one in the video.
On the old 20 it was Adam Smith, an economist lol
@@saige6442 The father of economics. So actually a big deal.
I love that painting
Came here to say the same!
British bank notes also have braille numbers on them.
It’s another way of helping the visually impaired to know what bank note they are holding 😊
As well as being slightly bigger in size, the larger the amount
The major difference is that they're all different _sizes_ . Whereas dollar bills, whatever the denomination, are all exactly the same size. It is much easier to shortchange people.
It's not actually braille numbers. It's just a cluster of braille dots with a different number of clusters for each note. Very handy.
The £1 coin is now multi sided. The £1 before decimalisation was made up of 20 shillings with each shilling being made up of 12 pence (pennies). Two shillings was known as a Florin and two shillings and 6 pence was also a coin known as half a crown (a crown was 5 shillings). Half a shilling (6 pence) was known as a tanner and half of that (3 pence) was known as thruppence.
Half a penny was known as a ha'penny (pronounced hape knee) and a quarter of a penny was a farthing. As well as £1 that was made up of 20 shillings, there was also a Guinea which was made up of 21 shillings.
Sadly I remember the old currency before we went decimalised.
Of interest, the coins are all made at the Royal Mint who also mint the coins for some other countries.
@@saucygibbon56 There are two groups, two rows of two dots each, on the £10 note, three on the £20 note, and four on the £50 note, but none on the fiver. The pattern was chosen after consultation with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People).
Fun fact: if you shine a UV light on the correct side of a UK bank note, it shows a number equal to the value of the note - so a fiver shows a 5, a tenner a 10, etc.
That is so it’s harder to make a fake one
Fun fact: you may have noticed the £ looks like an L, this is because it is for Libra Pondo which was a weight in Roman times, we may use Pound (from Pondo) but the symbol comes from Libra (also why pounds in weight has the symbol "lb"). Libra is of course associated with the scales (see star contilations) as in times gone by, goods and money were weighed to determine value.
In case you did not know, the $ comes from the name Spanish Dollar or Peso - because the Spanish dominated the Americas... and it stuck...
And the Spanish in their turn took the dollar from Bohemia, who had been using it for centuries. Shakespeare refers to them a few times, often to pun with "dolour".
Having the different denominations of banknotes in different sizes and colours is very useful. Having all the notes the exact same size and colour like American dollars must create great difficulties for visually impaired people.
Also worth noting that the new polymer notes actually have the value stamped in braille...
@Fifury161 I've noticed that, sure it's near that clear bit
Hello from South Africa 🇿🇦. If you get paid in cash for a job, you would have to count it ( in front of the client /customer which could give the wrong impression), because the notes are all the same size - not sure about the colour. There could be 100's on the top and bottom with other denominations inbetween. That's why our notes are different sizes and colours.👍
The different colours saved my hide when a customer at the shop I was working at accused me of short changing her. You could clearly see that I had a blue-green note in my hand on the camera, not an orange one.
Years ago, you had to pay one penny to use public toilets, that's how "Spending a penny" became a euphemism for needing to pee.
The £20 and £50 notes were upgraded last year, so now they are also made of polymer.
The highest denomination note in circulation produced by the bank of England is £50, but there are Scottish £100 notes in circulation.
Ha try spending a Scottish bank note in England. On time I have heard the term ‘legal Tender’ in public.
@@lordomacron3719 I used a Scottish £20 at my local chippy back in January. I usually end up bringing back a few Scottish notes to London each time I visit my sister's in Scotland. I've only been questioned about it twice in the last 7 years. Both times were in small family run shops.
That said, I know many small local shops can be a bit fussy about it. Specially in smaller towns and villages in the southern part of England, but up north like around Newcastle, you shouldn't have any issues. I've never had a problem using Scottish notes in any of the major supermarkets, so if you do have Scottish notes in England, then they are your best bet for hassle free shopping.
@@lordomacron3719 honestly though every single shopkeeper will look at you like you just smoked a crackpipe right in his shop when you try paying with scotch notes
Pretty sure the 50 quid note has been discontinued and is no longer british tender you can still use the scottish 100.
@@ashleytaylor7621 The Bank of England only released the new polymer £50 in the summer of 2021. Given that they were designed to last decades, I'd say it's extremely unlikely they would dump it after only 2 years.
Quid is just like "buck" for dollar. You probably wouldn't use it in a formal situation but everyone understands it. Also don't forget that you also use words like "nickel", "dime" and "quarter" for your coins, so you definitely do have slang terms for your money!
Coins and notes are all different sizes and shapes so you can identify them by feel - handy for everyone but REALLY useful for people with a vision impairment.
We also use the word "note" rather than "bill" - a "bill" is a check in a restaurant, or an invoice.
The first Charles III coins have just gone into circulation (50p piece) and they'll gradually replace the rest over the next years or decades.
All our currency is in 1/2/5, 10/20/50, and it's easy arithmetic. For example, to make 88p you need 50+20+10+5+2+1. For 88c you'd need 25+25+25+10+1+1+1, right? which is a whole extra coin.
We use £2 and £1 coins a lot because we don't have £1 notes any more.
That’s what I was finding confusing with Tyler’s initial surprise that we had a nickname for pound. When Americans use a nickname for US dollars all the time.
I think it comes from the same place as when some Americans go on about British accents. Then are surprised to find out they themselves have an accent, an American accent.
You also use greenback over there for your dollar bill.
The weird thing is that Americans use the term penny despite having cents.
Isn't there a 50 cents coin in America?
@@seanscanlon9067 it exists but it isn't common as it wasn't produced for twenty years (2002-2021).
So the term “to spend a Penny” came from when you had to pay for public bathrooms as it cost a penny in most places (when it started) and the saying has stuck.
It started in The Great Exhibition in 1851.
I'm in the Lake District right now and had to use some public loos. Was 50p - and contactless lol. Last time I paid for the loo it was 20p.
Soon instead of "Spend a Penny" we are going to have to "Drop a Pound".
🙃🎈
Came to the comments to check someone had said this already 👍🏻
The expression really came into use with the introduction of coin operated locks on the cubicles in public toilets. As always, people prefer to use an euphemism rather than saying 'I need to go and pee'.
Hi Tyler,
the portrait on the obverse (back) of the notes are of famous historical Britons, which is regularly changed. We also have a £50 note, but it is rarely used. The Notes also have a feature which is only visible under ultraviolet light, most shops have a lamp to check it. There are also several anti forging devices on the notes including a hologram which is quite cool. Also, the notes are of different sizes which is handy for the blind, it also includes a braille imprint.
Famous English people, yes. Not British (imagine if a Bank of England banknote had a Scotsman on it!)
@@brianandjillianadamson5479 Of course, thanks, I blame a brain slip at my advanced age 😶🌫😶🌫. However, the Romans defined 'Britain' as England and Wales, ignoring the bit above Hadrian's wall, and it became 'Great' Britain when Scotland came cap in hand and bankrupt in 1709 😪😪, so I could claim that technically, and historically I was correct, but that's stretching a point somewhat, so I'll accede to your point! But as the Pound Sterling is also the currency of Wales, surely there is no reason why there should not be a Welsh person represented on the notes.
Brits say "quid" due to its origins, possibly rooted in "quid pro quo" or linked to Quidhampton, a village in England with a Royal Mint paper mill. Its simplicity and distinctiveness made it popular, and it became synonymous with the pound sterling, gaining cultural significance over centuries.
Fun fact: I don't know if anyone has mentioned this but before we switched to "plastic" notes they were not made out of "paper" like the woman says in the video they were made of cotton or "cotton paper".
Also she say's that pennys and 5p's are made from silver and copper and that also is not true any more.
As a Brit, I really enjoy watching these videos!! I find myself answering your questions out loud lol! You're great, keep up the good work!!
same
We do use the £1 and £2 coins quite a lot especially depending where you are. Like paying for a takeaway or in other places that struggle to use card payments. Plus you use the £1 coin to use many shopping trolleys.
Yeah, fish and chips was 2 quid back when i lived up north. And a cab home from the west end was just under 3 quid in the 90's. So you always had some coins on ya for that kind of stuff.. 😎
I was looking for the Shopping trolley comment lol also I still use coins for parking machines but most of them are now changing to cards which stresses me out lol
Also working in a small town store, people bring in £2 coins frequently enough that at the end of the day there's like a good few of them in the tills.
A lot of folk try to off £2 coins because they're seen as less convenient so yeah they're used a lot more than you'd think.
And if you need to pay for parking in a P&D machine hardly any accept notes, even if it's like £7.60 for parking.... You have to feed it in with coins
13:48 if you look at the coin arrangement for the 5-50, it makes up the royal coat of arms! Also, each coin has a different size/number of sides to make it easier to tell what coin it is when rooting through a purse or smh
All the notes are different sizes too to aid people with eye issues. Also, they changed to the new indestructible notes as it cost the Royal Mint billions to keep reissuing notes due to old worn out notes having to be replaced. Countries who use ‘polymer notes’ include Canada, Australia (in 1998 btw) New Zealand, Mexico, Fiji, Singapore etc.
we use the £1 (one pound) coin all the time, because we dont have a £1 note. The £2 coin is fairly new and I think it was introduced to help with vending machines. We have a ton of different names for our money and theres probably a lot of names that are local to different areas of the country, like there are for most things in Britain. Pre 1971 we had different money altogether Pounds, Shillings & Pence. There were 240 pennies to a pound. Pounds were divided into Shillings. A Shilling was worth 12 pennies and was known a a "bob". You then had a 10 Shilling note (10 bob) which was half a quid (pound). Five Shillings was a "Crown" (five shillings was often called a Dollar as I think there were once 4 dollars to a pound, though I could be wrong on that one) The next coin was the Half Crown worth 2 shillings and 6 pence, this was often called a "half a'dollar" Then there was the "2 bob bit" witch was the 2 shilling piece (A "bit" was any single coin) Then it was the Shilling (1 bob) next was the 6 penny piece (for ever known as a "Tanner") Then the 3 penny piece (the "thru'penny bit..... cockney rhyming slang for the shits) Then came the Penny, next it was the half penny ("ha'penny") and lastly the Farthing which was a quarter of a penny.....The old money system was known as LSD (no not that LSD) and was in some ways better than the decimal currency we have now, because being made up of units of 12 meant that it could be divided in more ways than the decimal system of 10 (the pound cannot be divided equally by three as there is no coin worth a third of a penny)........phew! I need a lie down after that
Scotland still has a £1 note. It's still in circulation but they haven't made any new ones since 2001.
Don't forget the Florin which was worth two shillings
I half expected you to go back to the groat 😀
"fairly new" the £2 is 26 years old now haha. So I guess relatively new but that's almost half the length of time since decimalization.
Never ever heard of dollor mentioned with any UK money, and I remember using the old money. No idea where you lived to hear that.
You could call a £20 note A Score, and a £50 note A Bullseye. They are commonly called notes here in the UK not bills. Scotland and Northern Ireland issue their own banknotes which are used alongside Engilsh notes.
A bank note is actually a promise yto pay the amount shown printed on it, like a cheque is a promise to pay the amount written on it by the person issueing, or writing it out and signing it. A bank not in the Uk has the signature of the governor of the issueing bank in Scotland or N Ireland, or the Bank of England in England.
It's so annoying as a Scotsman having to exchange our Scottish banknotes to English notes if travelling to England. I learned that hard lesson the very first time I went to London- so many shopkeepers thought my money was fake lol.
I didnt even know Scotland had its own money until a few months ago when I visited I just assumed they used the English notes because we use the England notes in wales by the way I have never heard of someone using score and bullseye before must be an England thing
So does Bristol. Busses in Bristol are happy to take Bristol bank notes, but I've never seen them be used anywhere else. I think they're a bit of a gimmick
@@welsh-cymru1588 Around London a score = £20, a pony = £25, a bullseye = £50, a ton = £100 and a monkey = £500.
For us older people we also had a half pence coin growing up and a £1 note
Farthings? 🙂
And a 10/- note. The 50p coin came out before decimalisation to prepare us. Some shopkeepers robbed us with price conversions "god that's gone up mate!". Many didn't actually notice as inflation was worse than now.
I think we should still have the pound note personally.
I remember farthings, my nan used to give us kids one each Sunday. Used to go in the shop and get loads of sweets.
@@wessexdruid7598 a farthing, which stopped being tender in 1961, was one quarter of a penny
Before we had the polymer notes, we had paper notes. The serial number for each not was on the same half of the note, this meant that if you tore it in half you could only get the same back as you started with.
The 10p, 50p and £2 coins also have loads of different pictures on the face side. These represent historical events, people or other significant things in the UK. Fun to collect. Some are extremely rare and can be worth way more than face value to collectors.
The ones with parts of the shield on can be put together to make the full shield.
@@patmcguirk5299 I didn't know that....I'm going to go through those coins now, to see if I can put a complete shield together lol.
@@mikebridges7294each coin has a different part of the shield. So you need a full set 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, and 50p to make the full shield.
Also some pound coins have an image of the full shield on them.
The old 10p was also the exact same size as a new £2 and two shilling
Same for the old 5p being the same size as the one shilling
You could spend the old 5p and 10p and one and two shillings at the same time to the values of the 5 or 10 pence after decimalisation
@@mikebridges7294 yes the shield design was actually part of a competition won if memory serves me correctly
It was won by Arthur dent and lead to the shield design being known as the dent shield
There's also some slang for money - a pony = £25 and a monkey = £500. Money's also known as 'bread' which comes from rhyming slang 'bread and honey'. Before the UK was decimalised, 240 pennies = £1
And a score = £20
And a pound coin is called a nugget, at least round here it is. Not sure if that's a regional thing or not
You have a Buck. A Jackson, and a Benjamin and 30 others. Theres too much to mention really...
Got a deep sea diver?
Also a score is £20
One thing they missed out was that the lower denomination coins when put together form a shield. If you go back and look at the back of the coins you can see part of the shield on each one ..... a fiscal jigsaw.
While the Pound Coin has the full design on them!
Certain decimal coinage came into circulation prior to the 1971 decimalisation: I remember all hell breaking loose, back in the mid-seventies when a checkout operator in a supermarket I was working in, accepted a pre-decimal 10 shilling note, (which had been superceded in 1970 by the 50p coin,) assuming that it was a Scottish £10 note.
In my area, we used to call a £5 note a bluey. So on and so forth for the rest corresponding by colour.
Colour, size, quantity of braille dimples, historical figure on the back, and of course the numerical denomination.
So many ways to identify our cash.
I’m a 74 year old Briton and I think in my lifetime things have changed to the extent that when I was a child I considered people who remembered the Second World War as old, whereas at my age I realise that I must be old because I remember the pre-decimalisation currency (decimal currency came in in 1971) and I had actually passed the age of 21 when that happened. I still remember the old system of £sd to four places of decimals (my earliest job was in a Cost Office) which is one of the more useless attainments I have. It had 240 old pennies to the pound instead of 100.
What I do distinctly remember is an American tourist being asked on radio at the time what he thought about our changing currency, and his reply was that he found it very confusing! I could never understand why someone from a decimal currency country like the USA would find a decimal currency system confusing! Perhaps you had to be American?
I feel old,
2 farthings = 1 halfpenny
2 halfpence = 1 penny (1d)
3 pence = 1 thruppence (3d)
6 pence = 1 sixpence (a 'tanner') (6d)
12 pence = 1 shilling (a bob) (1s)
2 shillings = 1 florin ( a 'two bob bit') (2s)
2 shillings and 6 pence = 1 half crown (2s 6d)
5 shillings = 1 Crown (5s)
When I was at junior school, 'doing sums' with money was the bane of my life. We usually worked in pounds, shillings, pence (pennies), halfpenny and farthings. Addition and multiplication were bad enough but long division was a nightmare.
Find the remainder of dividing £132, 3 shillings and sixpence halfpenny by 9.
The £ beng a stylised L for Libre the same as the € for Euro is a stylised E. Oh for the old Lsd days. What a $ has to do with Dollar is a mystery.
@@johnsharp6618 You Forgot the old Guinea coin value £1. 1/- (£1.05p) Bloodstock (Horses) are sold in Guineas still today. Also the gold Sovereign (£1) and half Sovereign (10/- = 50p) but now worth the current gold bullion value plus a premium depending on condition and year. The Sovereign weighs 1 troy oz. or should. (1 troy oz. = 1/20 lb. not 1/16).
The first banknote was the old white £5 just under in A4 size and only printed on the face in black. One had to write one's name on back when spending where not known as were very easy to counterfeit.
@Tony S I was only young as the money changed, to be honest. I never got more than a sixpence and bloody lucky if I got a florin .
Fun fact: Originally a pound was the value of one pound in weight of silver.
Hence pounds Stirling?
Stirling I think came a little later. This from two Scottish brothers called Stirling who invented Stirling Silver. Pure silver is very soft. The Stirling brothers produced a much harder and more useful material by adding a little copper to the Silver. Stirling Silver is 92.5% silver.
The term 'pound sterling' came from the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon coin known as a sterling (probably meaning 'little star'), a pound weight of which was known as a pound.
@@johnwilletts3984 Silver is Sterling - as are GBP..
Actually the weight of a gold sovereign which is 1 troy oz. of pure gold (1/20 of a lb.) 1 Sov. = £1 20 Sovs. = 1lb in weight. (A lot of money today).
When I visit the States, where all the notes are the same size and colour, I had to look carefully at each one to make sure I gave the right amount to pay for something.
18:44 is because for public toilets you often have to pay to use them like at the beach on Weston Super Mare and it used to be 1 penny. In 1851 the Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London. The refreshment rooms featured public conveniences for which a small charge was made. By the time the exhibition closed over 800,000 visitors had paid more than £2,000 for use of the facilities. And so was born the concept of ‘spending a penny’ to use the loo.
13:09 Ah a random £2 coin and the 'shield set'. You will still see the the others in circulation, but the £1 coins had a major design change and are no longer accepted. So you are less likely to see that one anymore. They have a silver centre like the £2 coin now, but still occasionally see the old ones when customers try to hand them over.
The image designs will change on coins and are still accepted.
The pound symbol (£) derives from it resembling a stylised "L", from the old system of referring to pounds, shillings and pence (LSD) which is from the Roman Livre, Sesterti and Denari. A shilling was equilvalent to 5 pence (5p) and was written as 1/- (like on the Mad Hatter's hat from Alice in Wonderland). Quid is from the Latin (as in 'quid pro quo') meaning "something" or "the essence of". A guinea was very roughly equivalent to a pound, named because it was made from West African gold. It's value was between 20 to 30 shillings (depending on the value of gold). Guineas where used for luxury items; racehorses are still valued in guineas (being £1.05 for each guinea) as are the prizes in horse races. The extra £0.05 was theoretically the seller's commission.
The Latin word for pound is "Libra". "Livre" is French, not Roman, and is used occasionally to mean 500 grams (confusing, since a pound in the US and UK is 453.6 grams). But they also refer to the UK currency as "La Livre Sterling".
Librae, Solidi, and Denarii. These were originally Roman measures.
@@wessexdruid7598 Apologies, my bad. You are correct.
@avaggdu1 In the LSD system a shilling is 12 pence and 20 shillings is a pound. After introducing the new/decimal penny the kept the 20 shillings in a pound thus the shilling became 5 new pennies,
Yes, For those of us who still prefer to use cash we generally use coins more than notes especially £1 and £2 coins
If youre 80 maybe who in there right mind walks around with change?? Are you good?
Youre telling me when you get a pint you pay with 10 20p and 5 10p
I'm 39, if I have change in my pocket I will use it. I still use 1p's, 2p's, 5p's and 10p's if I just need something like a loaf of bread.
@@ashleytaylor7621 where the hell are you that a pint is £2.50?
@@aidancolyer7924 anywhere not in london..... Or the south
Some public toilets used to have a slot on the door, you would have to put a penny in the slot to open the door to use a toilet, hence spending a penny was the same as saying going to the loo.
Nowadays some have a barrier you have to pay to get through and now costs 20p 30p 50p.
"Spending a penny" comes from the days when public toilets were not free to use. You used to have to pay 1 penny to use them (the door had a coin operated lock). The money used to go towards keeping the toilets clean and in good condition.
Then after decimalisation those locks were kept and it became 2p as the coins were the same size
18:48 a lot of old public toilets used to be pay to enter, which was officiallly used to support the maintenance of them. Early ones had the entrance fee as 1p and it bacame a euphemism because of Victorian sensibilities.
I think a big thing with the £1 and £2 coins being used commonly vs the dollar coin is there just isn't a £1 note like there is for a dollar, the smallest note is £5 which is quite a bit of money and many small transactions are for less.
And generally isn't that common to round up and say keep the change when paying, especially as tipping isn't that common and at pubs, cafes, etc. often pay upfront per drink/item at a time rather than have a tab so lots of small transactions rather than 1 big one.
youll also occasionally get people who still also call 50p coins 10 bob. A 'bob' was the slang word for a Shilling, which was worth 12 old pennies. Following decimilisation in 1971, a Shilling was worth 5 new pence. The old 'ten bob note' (10 shillings) was the equivalent of 5 Florins, or 4 Half Crowns, or 2 Crowns. After decimilisation, it was worth 50p
10 florins to the pound - issued in the early 1800s as the UK's first step towards decimalisation.
British notes differ in size and colour to help those who are partially sighted differentiate between each note. The same way as each coin differs in size and shape. Also the new notes have braille on them. It will take time for new notes and coins to enter circulation with King Charles on however, new 50 pence coins with Charles on the reverse have started to enter circulation.
Hi NeilC. You are 100% right but I would also add that different appearances (sizes / colours) also help anti-counterfeiting efforts. Moreover, even for the perfectly-sighted, they help us avoid simple errors. Cheers.
7:47 the reason for them being different sizes and having a slightly different texture to them is so that visually impaired and blind people can identify which note is which
Sometimes folk (mostly from London) use rhyming slang for their money, for example: A Nicker or an Alan whicker ( a nicker can be substituted for quid) is a pound, a Lady Gerdiver is £5 a Big Ben is £10, a score is £20, a Pony (short form of pony and trap) is 25, a Bullseye is £50, a Ton or Century is £100, a Monkey is £500, a Grand is a £1000, there are many more, but these are the common phrases used. Having no money, we would say I'm Skint or they are Skint, same as broke.
You'll notice in the comments, we refer to the 'paper' money as notes, not bills.
Yeah, it's the WRONG terminology to call it a "bill". A bill is a written invoice!
@@ajones684 I'm not sure how the Fed does things so bill might sense linguistically, but the reason we call them "notes" in the UK is because it's shorthand for "promissory notes". In the olden days the Bank of England upheld the promise written on every note by letting you walk into the building and asking to exchange the Chief Treasurers' promises for their value in gold - when we left the gold standard in 1931 the promise was no longer backed by gold but by securities (i.e. gilts) but the promise is still upheld (any notes out of circulation, or damaged notes, can be exchanged for good current notes).
Actually, the official name for all us paper currency is notes, not bills. Bills is a slang term. Go to the federal reserve website, and you’ll see they refer to their money as the “$100 note” or the “$20 note”. Of course, on the money itself it also says “Federal Reserve Note”. Nowhere will you see a reference to bills in official US government documentation.
Quid comes from the name of the paper mill that provided the paper for the Bank of England's original notes (c1724). The mill is called The Quidhampton Mill at Overton in Hampshire. It's still there now. Quid became a nickname for a pound taken from the name of the mill.
That's one supposed derivation, another is that it comes from the Latin phrase "quid pro quo", quid meaning something... The full phrase being 'something for something' or a fair exchange of goods and services!
@@Tarantio1983 I'm aware of that but it is a bit contrived to be historical and grand whereas it is more likely to be simple. As all things in life, simplest things first. The mill's connection to the BoE and the de Portal family settles it for me. The two 'quids' is coincidental. 😄
Thanks for sharing the history of the quid. 😊
A quid is a block of tobacco used in pipes, and early pound notes were massive and had to be folded up in your wallet, so it was like a quid of tobacco. I very much doubt that market traders knew much Latin or cared about ancient printers.
We used to have a £1 note, when are bank notes were made out of paper, but the £1 note used to rip quite easily, so on 21st April 1983 the £1 note was changed into the £1 coin, and for some reason in 1998 they introduced the £2 coin.
The 20 pence coin was introduced on the 9th June 1982.
The £1 £2 coins are used on a daily basis.
You are probably too young but we also used to have a ten shilling note.
@@stephenhodgson3506 We also had silver threepenny bits before the brass polygonal ones.
The 20 p came out with the others before 'D' day as the change was known as (not legal tender until) but changed size/shape that year. As has the size of the 5 p 10 p and 50 p all gotten smaller. The 5 and 10 were the same size and weight as the 1/- and 2/- originally so could be kept in circulation together so vending machines could be changed over time and paid in to banks bagged together as £5 silver. The old £sd coins slowly withdrawn before the size change as became underweight or damaged.
I remember the sweeney 100 pound in one pound notes lol. Anybody remember the half pence coin?
@@mrpotnoodle4160 Yes. When I left school I worked in a pet/garden shop, and lots of things were priced ending in 1/2p. I also remember the dog license being 37 1/2 p.
Pence is instead of saying Penny's, Quid is a slang term for Pound or Pound's for more than 1 pound.
When my parents and grandparents were young, we had coins that are no longer used today like the old Penny (or Ship Penny), Halfpenny, Farthing, Threepence, Sixpence, Half Sixpence, Shilling, Crown, Half Crown, Florin, The One Pound was a Huge Note not a coin, and the coins were much bigger than they are now and different shapes these were changed over the years mainly to prevent forgery and the fact that some were pre Decimal and others Post Decimal coinage
20:16 The Bank of England notes are the main notes, but the Scottish and Northern Irish ones are more commonly used just their respective countries, so if you used an Northern Irish or Scottish note in England you might get a strange look the same if you used a Scottish note in Northern Ireland, but if you used an English note in NI or Scotland it wouldn't get a question
The Pound (£) is the oldest currency in the World still in use. It started 750 AD - 800 AD in England. The first Pound coin was in 1489 AD under the reign of Henry VII. The Penny dates back to the 9th century in England too. 🏴🇬🇧🇺🇸
Wrong the pound comes from the romans we adopted it as to our currency was LSD pound, shilling, denari(pence)
So technically the oldest currency was from the romans as we still use pound and pence today which were both roman.
@@ashleytaylor7621 No, the British Pound is the oldest used currency. The Romans used the Aureus, Denarius & Sestertius. Are they in use today?
@@Paul-hl8yg the pound and denari come from the romams and as i just stated the pence actually stands for denari so yes yes we still use pounds and denari to thus day which is roman currency that they brought to england.... Was that really that hard to understand?
@@Paul-hl8yg the pound coin youre talking about is sterling pound whixh yes is the british currency but it didnt take over the roman pound it just added different value the same thing that happens to everysingle currency, also if you think that the currency changes just because its looks different then how come we still call our 1p 2p 5p 10p 20p 50p pence? Theyre not pence? A pence is 1/12 of a shilling and a shilling is 1/20 of a pound but yet its still pence and pounds the value and the design may have changed but its still pence the same currency we have used for over 1000 years. I think if you dont truly know your history you shouldnt talk on such matters...
Quid probably comes from the Latin phrase quid pro quo we think - since it means something for something
There is actually such a thing as a £100 note, but only in Scotland. The Bank of England doesn't make any £100 notes, and even in Scotland they're pretty rare as far as I'm aware.
I thought we used to have one on England as well , I seem to remember it being Brown for some reason. maybe we didn't or was that a Scottish one?
Can confirm.
You can use them in a shop, but likely they will go and get the manager over to confirm it’s okay.
Never tried to use one in England but I guess theoretically it’s possible? Unlikely they will accept it though.
@@ShrubScotland Scottish £100 notes are legal tender throughout the UK, despite the reluctance and moaning you'll get from the shop.
@IanDarley Not according to the Bank of England; only Royal Mint coins and Bank of England banknotes are legal tender in England and Wales. Shops do not have to accept Scottish or Northern Irish notes as payment and customers can refuse them in their change.
Spending a penny, Public Toilets used to be locked, you used a Penny Coin to open the door.
17:14 The £5 note, £2 coin, and £1 coin are used a lot.
We do not have a £1 note (though we used to before I was born) so yeah. That coin is used lots.
Even in physical things like lockers, coin machines, and trolleys.
They sizing of UK notes is irrelevant in regards to vision impairment. They have the denomination written on them in braille.
Quid means pound. Our old pounds ( Roman librum...lb) were a physical weight equivalent of cash. Lbs are still used as a weight in cooking. The term 'quid' comes from the Latin phrase Quid Pro Quo, meaning something for something, as in an exchange. Our note currency is a bearer note that is exchangabke for the same calue in gold (in theory) so it is something for something, or a Quid (pro quo, but we don't bother saying that)
You can actually get £5 coins that are issued for special occasions but you'd have to order or specifically buy one from a bank or through mail order. Most people normally save them although they are legal tender and can be spent. Spend a penny relates to the charge to access public toilets 40+ years ago when you'd put a penny in the cubicle door to give you access.
And now you'd be lucky if it were merely a penny to get into they damned toilets. Some places 20p, I've seen some charging £1. If you find yourself at such a toilet please hold the door/gate open for anyone behind because it's fucking ridiculous.
The £20 and £50 notes have now also been replaced with plastic versions and the old paper ones went out of circulation at the end of last year. The new notes with King Charles have been released as designs but won't go into full circulation until next year and even then the versions with the Queen on will still be legal tender for some time after that.
I don't want Charles on the money. 😫
Also, King Charles will appear on the new currency, WITHOUT a crown!
@@ajones684 why?
The 50 pence with king charles has been released
The pence denominations was driven by the pricing of common goods. If an item is £2.59 you give the retailer £3 and you get back 41p for example. You start to accumulate all this change. This change can be made up of whatever the retailer gives you. Over time you just end up with all these small coins which becomes a pain in the neck. I have a plastic tub full of low value coins and I think a lot of people do too.
In Italy when there were 2400 lire to the pound, shopkeepers used to give change in the form of sweets.
It allows for the minimum possible coins with change without being overbearing. 5+2+2 = 9, 3 coins vs 5+1+1+1+1, 5 coins, also all money goes 1, 2, 5, 1(0), 2(0), 5(0), 1(.00), 2(.00), 5(.00), 1(0.00), 2(0.00), 5(0.00) to allow for this.
Some banks have a cash machine sorter where u can dump all your change in and it will put the amount in your account
I use them to play poker with friends. Mostly 1p and 2p. It’s not much but playing with real money as chips does make it more enjoyable.
But really we are just moving around small change between us no one ever actually spends their ‘winnings’ it just gets used next we play.
I want to mention a few things, in some areas cash is still popular as the contactless payment requires a Wi-Fi or internet signal and in some places it’s very difficult to get any phone signal. Some shops offer cash back as there’s not so many bank branches around in rural areas like there used to be. Cash back is handy as the shops are not necessarily keeping extra money on site as it were. In Switzerland you can get a 1000 Franc note and use it but a few places might be reluctant to accept it has such a high value. American money seems a bit like monopoly stuff and it’s a bit weird to thank many folk live on less than 1$ a day in some places. The bank notes will change but it’s not immediate, the images for money and stamps are stock ones and will be agreed before being issued. In practice the notes are legal tender so no problem there, there’s also the associated industry of machines taking and issuing notes. The features built in have to be included in any update that the machine dispensers have. Not much changes straight away but some changes are more important than others, all politicians have to swear their allegiance to The Monarch. The day to day stuff is automatic. There used to ships that came to the UK with goods from across the globe and some of their phrases probably got absorbed into daily life. I personally keep a small amount of coins to the value of around £5 so I can buy milk and a jar of instant coffee. If I have any thing over it goes in a money bag and I pay it into a Magic Money machine at my bank, I have a contactless card with around £20 and use that to avoid too much change. The different sizes are supposed to represent their value but with the 1p coin and 5P you would have a job to know. There was a time you went to a public toilet and inserted a penny so you could use the cubicle,so that’s probably where that came from. The Red phone boxes used to accept a 2p or 10p coin and that’s why we had them. 2p for local and 10 for elsewhere. You can check this out on TH-cam.
1p and 2p coins were awesome as a kid as we used to go to the shop and get mix ups (bags of small sweets) for like 5p, 10p, 20p etc so you'd save them up and get a small bag of sweets on the way to or from school. That changed it senior school though as then sweets were no longer 1p each and went quickly over like 5 years to like 5p each. Prob alot more now.
One of the bad things about having polymer notes is how they are difficult to fold, they’ve been known to spring out of you wallet or your hand and then float off into oblivion…..
And they often stick together. I've handed over twice the money I meant to give more than once.
There is no £1 or £2 bank notes, so the coins are very much used.
I didn't hear it in the video but Alan Turing is on the £50 note. So Winston Churchill for £5, Jane Austin for £10, JMW Turner for £20 and Alan Turing for £50.
I'm not the only one who was baffled when he said his grandad gives him £50 in a birthday card, right? I literally said "You toff bastard" out loud when he said that
Thays what my nan gave all her grandkids for birthday in the 90's. 500 Kroner. My mum got 1000 kroner like the rest of her siblings.. And we're middle class. Nothing fancy going on there.. 😁
Yep! I always got tenners or twenty if was lucky, lol.
@@ebbhead20 Remember the cost of living differentials too. When I went to Denmark in the late eighties most things were at least 40% or 50% more but.....................earnings there compensated for it. Similar or worse was in Norway etc.......I bought a Burger there, in Andøya in '87, and it was more than £8.00, the same in the UK back then was between £1 and £2.
I would get £5 or £10 (occasionally £20) in a birthday card. But my relatives did not have a lot.
I used to get a fiver in a card and then it was rationed out. Lasted me a couple of months and it still more than doubled my pocket money.
At 3:46 The word "quid" comes from the Latin phrase "quid pro quo" ("what for what") or an exchange of something for something. Also, "nicker" can be used instead of pound; i.e., "a nicker" is £1 or "five nicker" is £5. Moreover, "one pound" used to refer to one pound (lb) of silver (Sterling), which was originally divided into 240 pieces called pennies. And there used to be 12 silver pennies to a shilling, and obviously 20 shillings was a pound of silver. Before decimalisation in 1971, a two-shilling coin (24 pennies) was known as a "Florin" and a two-and-a-half shilling coin (30 pennies) was known as "Half-a-Crown" or "Half-a-Dollar," with a five-shilling coin (60 pennies) referred to as a "Crown" or a "Dollar," since at the time (1930s and 1940s) £1 was equal to US $4.
I grew up in Scotland,i think our money is pretty straight forward for the most part,we used to have a half pence and they did away with that.Spending a penny,means going to the toilet,they are probably meaning that a while back,you used to have to put a coin in the door of a public bathroom to use the toilet,just like some places you have to put a quarter in the shopping cart at certain grocery stores and you have to bring the cart back to get your quarter back,but you didn't get your coin back at the public bathroom.There is some parts of England that will tell you they won't except our Scottish money and you pretty much have to fight with them and tell them it's legal tender and you need to accept it,they don't think Scottish money is real currency,thanks again for your video Tyler,made me think of home.
I like these guys a lot better than that last American couple who end up asking the viewer questions because they aren't experienced enough to know the answers.
They are annoying to many Brits though because of their lacking knowledge of their own money. "There's no note bigger than a £50 note." Well there's the £100 note, still in circulation and printed by some Scottish Banks for a start (the English version was not in circulation for that long but there was one).
I can't believe they don't know why spend a penny is an unknown origin to them 🤣. It's because it used to cost 1p to use a public toilet, obv to pay the cleaner or person who looks after them. Cost me 30p in Leeds bus station the other week though😳
It used to cost 1d not 1p
They're not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Kids don't know anything these days.
@@lesjames5191 Those 'kids' are nearing 30 in that video.
@@Mathemagical55 I'm not surprised anyone young doesn't know about using an old penny for a public loo....and they seem perfectly intelligent to me....harsh... 😄
The first time I used dollars when I was 26, I couldn't tell the difference between the notes. To this day, I'm convinced I gave someone a 20 instead of a $1 note and they took it and said nowt.
On one trip to the States with work, my husband muddled his notes and didn't hand enough over. Obviously they complained.
First time I went to the States at 13, I was with my Gran. I was basically there to convert prices to pounds for her (I could do it on the hoof), so she knew how much things were costing. It was still a fun holiday.
Apparently the paper used in all bills is the same...I heard that forgers simply washed off the ink from smaller bills and reprinted them at a higher denomination
Little tip: the bills have numbers in the corners ($5, $10, $20, and so on)
What part of Yorkshire are you from Elaine lol?
One critique. Scottish and Northern Irish bank notes are actually not legal tender in England, and English notes are not classed as legal tender in Scotland and Northern Ireland. What they are is 'legal currency', which is something different. It's sort of like a multi-currency union, but not exactly official. It means they can be accepted, but it is at the discretion of the vendor or individual.
Many of our prices in England end at 99p so if you buy a magazine at £4.99 you would use 4 one pound coins, a 50p coin and a combination of 10p or 20p coins to get the £4.90 then use a 5p and 2p or 1p coins to make up the 9 pence which means that you don't end up with lots of pennies in your coin purse.
I remember when we used to have 1 pound notes. I got a small windfall, and just to be cheeky (I was a kid) I went into the bank and asked for £250 in pound notes. Felt great lol
In Scotland the £1 note was in use to fairly recently
Few points:
All the notes they showed are Bank of England notes, which is the most used in England and Wales.
In Scotland, we also have notes from the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland (separate banks, not a typing error) and the Clydesdale Bank.
In Northern Ireland there's notes Danske Bank and one or two other that I don't remember the names of at the moment.
All of them are Sterling, which is the currency, and are legal tender across all of the U.K.
However, it's really, really, reaaaaaaaalllllllly f****** common for people in England to be completely unaware of any of banks other than the Bank of England, and to treat any notes from a Sterling currency bank other than the Bank of England as being fake note (I'm from Scotland and have family in England. This thing with the notes is so, f******, annoying).
You'll find that all notes are readily accepted in Scotland, and although I've never been to Northern or Wales, I used to work retail and in pubs for years and I've been told plenty of times by folk from those countries that they know about Scottish and Northern Irish money and readily accept them without any issues.
This thing with the notes also happens outside of the U.K. Twice while abroad I've had Royal Bank of Scotland notes and have tried to change them to the local currency and I was rejected because they weren't "British notes", even though they LITERALLY ARE AND STERLING JUST THE SAME AS THE BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES. * sigh *
When i worked in a pub as a student, the landlady told us that Scottish notes and coins were valid currency, which we could accept. Manx coins from the Ilse of Man, was not legal tender so we couldn't accept it. Never saw currency from Northern Ireland, but I'd probably have checked. I can't remember about currency from the Channel Islands. I have seen the odd coins from Guernsey about 30 years ago, but I don't know if it's legal tender or not.
Bank notes, by definition, are not legal tender. Neither English nor Scottish. Anywhere.
@@Rhianalanthula Manx money isn't sterling, it's a separate currency which has its value pegged to the value of sterling. The Isle of Man is not part of the UK.
@@tmac160 Bank of England notes are legal tender in England and Wales. No other banknotes are. The only money legal tender for any amount in the UK are coins over £1 issued by the Royal Mint
Confusingly, some of the Northern Irish notes are issued by the Bank of Ireland UK plc and these are headed "Bank of Ireland", giving the misleading impression that they might originate from the Republic of Ireland.
The old "paper" money was not actually paper. It was made from cotton pulp rather than wood pulp like normal paper. The colours used for each note are unique to the Bank of England so you won't find these exact colours on anything else and also although the ink used is dry to the touch it has unique properties that mean it never actually fully dries out. Finally, a couple of fun facts. There is a £1 million hand written bank note on display at the Bank of England museum which is technically legal tender and Queen Elizabeth II is the first British Monarch to have their portrait feature on our Bank notes.
Previous monarchs portraits were used on bank notes going back to at least George V
Yes, on Scottish notes. Elizabeth II is the first monarch on English banknotes.
Not sure if anyone has already mentioned this but (and you see it on the shot of all the coins together) that all the coins together as shown in the video on the back forms a shield - have a look at it! - they also didn't mention that the newer, plastic money (and the £20 is now plastic too) has braille dots for the visually impaired too.
I live down South and a lot of shops refuse to take Scottish notes, banks usually will but won’t give them out to other customers. Some will exchange them.
I was once travelling to the USA and changed £100 into US$ at Chicago O'Hare. Back then, it should have given me $159 plus some small change. The American teller counted out $155 and then was supposed to count out the final 4 $1 bills but instead didn't look properly and gave me 4 more $10 bills. I didn't notice at all because I was jet lagged and she was counting quickly. When I got to my final destination, I looked properly and realised the exchange rate was VERY much in my favour for the time - $195 for £100!
Fun Fact: Since Scotland and North Ireland use their own Pound, the Bank of England issues £100 Million Notes, which not only don't have the Queen, but are also considered Legal Tender.
"Spending a penny" dates from many years ago, when public toilets had locks which required you to insert a penny coin into them before you could open the door to enter. Also, they are wrong about being able to use Scottish or Northern Irish notes in England, it used to be acceptable to use Scottish notes, but is no longer, and shops in England have never accepted Northern Irish notes (As I know from personal experience, having travelled between Northern Ireland and England regulary at one time) Any Bank will exchange the notes for English ones however.
Now it costs 20p to use a public loo.
@@fionagregory9147 It has been many years since ive seen anywhere where you have had to pay to go for a piss
I've never had a problem using Scottish notes in England to this day. Being a Scotsman living in the south of England, my family down here gets Scottish notes in cards and we get them from visiting family in Scotland. Younger cashiers sometimes need a supervisor/manager to 'help' them but they always accept them, so your point on that is not correct. N.Irish notes though, are generally not accepted on the Mainland at all.
@@fionagregory9147 Only in stations and possibly London. Public toilets in general though are free to use.
@@AviatorCameron you do have to pay in Exeter so there.
16:53 - "a lot of this is digital now" - this is the main reason why they got rid of the £100 note, Also burning money is not illegal in the UK (defacing it is though!) The band KLF famously burnt £1M back in 1994.
As for the coins - they showed the layout of the coins that forms a shield. Also worth noting that only notes issued by the Bank of England are considered "legal tender" (other UK banks that issue their own notes do so under the Bank Charter). Coins are issued by the Royal Mint and they make local variations and special editions on the £1 & £2 coins.
Also worth noting that coins from Guernsey, Jersey & Isle of Man (Sterling) are often used interchangeably, although not officially "legal tender" in the UK.
Err no, that’s not why we got rid of the £100 note - until WW2 the Bank of England issued notes from ten shillings up to one thousand pounds, but because of the Nazi’s Operation Bernhard counterfeiting scheme (when they tried to undermine the British economy by producing floods of fake money, though they never really launched the scheme - they eventually used the fakes to pay spies), and all Bank of England notes larger than £5 were withdrawn in 1946. Larger notes were reintroduced over subsequent decades, £10 in 1960, £20 in 1970, £50 in 1980, but we never had the need for larger notes again.
The Bank of England does print higher value notes, £1,000,000 and £100,000,000, but only for internal use to represent and cover the value of the money issued by the various Scottish and Northern Irish banks.
21:45 Some shops like the Chippy only accept cash or if your only spending £2 or something then we will use cash as some card machines only allow a £3 minimum but other than that people tend to just use their bank card
You always have to have a pound coin in your purse/wallet to put in the supermarket trollies to release them. So yes, you definitely need them.
Or a token.
the two pence coin is one of the most used coins we have if you need to give someone 89 pence you give them a 50p 20p 10p 5p 2p 2p
£20 notes have been updated since that video. Charles currency hasn't appeared yet. Another security feature on top of the plastic windowed notes and holograms, they also have elements that light up under a UV light. You were correct, the different sizes of the notes are so that the sight impaired can easily differentiate the notes and they also have braille markings. She was wrong btw, the copper coloured coins are now steel, as a magnet would demonstrate. The newer 2 colour £1 coins were brought in as the old ones were so easy to counterfeit, it was thought that at one point, almost 50% of those in circulation were fake. Scottish money is not technically legal tender in England, but there is a standing agreement between the banks to exchange them.
Never underestimate the number of names for British money. People of a certain age may still use terms from pre-decimalisation i.e. 5p can be called a shilling, or a bob. 50p is 10 bob etc. 10p is 2 bob, or a florin, but to be fair, you're likely to confuse anyone under 50 with those terms. Fortunately many other coins no longer exist, so they're unlikely to be confused by a tanner etc.
Charles is on a new 50p pieces atm, and rolling out more
@@ED11116 I've not seen any yet, but I'll keep an eye out for them.
@@RileyELFuk They’ve really made his ears A LOT smaller on them!!
@@ED11116 Heh! Lucky they didn't have to deal with his sausage fingers.
The only Scottish notes that are legal in England have the word 'Sterling' on them. Scotland have their own notes without it on. They are not legal tender in England.
Check out the shield made out by arranging the coins the way they are at 13:10
"Why are coins 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1?"
Because it's _the minimum set of denominations that permit any fraction of 100 pence to be represented by the smallest number of coins._
It's the most efficient the system can be.
Scotland accepts both english and Irish pound notes but england tends to only accept English notes
Scottish and Northern Irish notes are accepted in England if they say 'Sterling'
@@IDTV66I think when he says not accepted he means in shops:yes,they are legal in England,but you try getting English shops to take them!!🎩
The Scottish and NI notes are legal tender everywhere in the UK but a lot of shops in England are reluctant to accept them because they're unfamiliar with them. Probably worried about forgeries.
NI notes are more of a problem because there are several banks in Northern Ireland with the right to issue notes (Ulster Bank, Bank of Ireland, Danske Bank, etc.) and they all use different designs. There's only one type of Scottish note.
It was more difficult when the Republic of Ireland used the Irish Pound (Punt), as many people in England thought the NI notes were Irish currency. Since the RoI adopted the Euro, acceptance of NI notes in England has improved a bit.
@@markchambers3833 scottish notes arent even legal tender in scotland (yes i just looked it up)
The reason is that they require a different line on a cash form for banking and people are lazy . Added to that people don't know enough about the other notes to identify them clearly.
It's easier now it used to be 12 pennies to a Shilling and 20 shillings to a pound.
pounds, Shillings and pence are before my time, however i find it interesting that a pound of silver was used to mint 240 pennies
And 21 shillings in a guinea
uk banknotes are a world away from american banknotes the uk changes there coins and notes regularly but america rarely dose just generally better looking
Hi, I used to go to the States in the 70's when I was a student and I remember 25 cents being referred to as 2 bits. Also, when I was a kid public conveniences (toilets) needed 1 penny in a slot to gain access. Hence spend a penny.
If you really want to be confused, here in Scotland we have 4 different designs of notes for each denomination. 3 Scottish and the bank of England notes. We reply a lot on the colour to ID them at first glance. Northern Ireland have several of their own too.
We also have £100 notes which England does not.
Fun fact: at some grocery stores, if you want a shopping cart, you have to put a pound coin in the trolly to release it from the row, you get the pound back when you return it, so you can't be lazy and just leave it anywhere 😉
The samd applies with lockers in sports gyms.
Also to stop kids from throwing them in lakes and whatnot. They bloody love doing that.
Yes, Aldi in Australia do that.😊
Used a penny to get in public toilets. Hence spending a penny.
Scotland has a £100 pound note
1 Pence = 1 cent. 1 pound = 1 dollar
Nope incorrect I had a dollar once got 64p when changed to our currency
in scotland each bank has a different design of each note, they still issue £100 notes
The different sizes help visually impaired people to tell which note is what value, the new polymer notes also have the braille number relating to that value in a corner.
I try and use cash as much as I can. I don't support a cashless society
Actually the official cutoff date was September 2022 - paper notes can only be exchanged at a bank now. A bank in Northern Ireland (then called the Northern Bank) issued a polymer £5 note back in 2000 to celebrate the millennium - this was due to the bank being owned by the Bank of Australia at the time. I assume they are talking about bank notes issued by the Bank of England - other banks in the UK issue their own notes and both Scotland & Northern Ireland still issue a £100 note. Whilst both Sterling you will struggle to spend the notes outside of the country of issue though (legal currency vs legal tender)
The bank notes shown in the video are all Bank Of England issued sterling notes, but not everybody lives in England or uses those notes on a daily basis. In Scotland and the North of Ireland sterling currency notes are also issued by various banks and those notes circulate alongside the Bank Of England notes in those regions. Those non Bank Of England notes are generally not accepted in England. The Scottish and Northern Irish notes don't tend to feature the monarch's image. They are just as colourful as the Bank Of England notes but there is a certain inconsistency in the colours used. One bank's £5.00 note may be the same colour as another bank's £10.00 note.
There are interesting versions of pound sterling that are exclusive to specific regions, the city of Bristol for example has its own Bristol pound that is only accepted in local Bristol shops in an effort to encourage spending locally as when you are given a local note you have to spend it there or else it’s worthless similar with over seas territory’s like the Falkland islands where there are local Falkland pound notes to encourage spending locally aswell it all means standard pound sterling can come in but local notes never leave making them more wealthy from outside visitors
The first polymer series of Australian banknotes was issued between 1992 and 1996. It was the first in the world to be printed on polymer substrate instead of paper. The first denomination in the eighth series was issued on 1 September 2016.
The first polymer banknote in Australia (the $10 note) was issued in 1988 for our bicentenary. The other notes were gradually issued in the early 1990s.
@@Donizen1
Sorry, I forgot all about the $10 🥴 ~ my old grey matter is drifting off to lala lala land🥴
I still remember getting 4 lollies for one penny lol
This video only addresses the Bank of England notes; Scotland and Northern Ireland prints their own notes which have differences, but all British currency can be used anywhere in the UK. Scottish notes have wildlife on the reverse, I'm pretty sure five has rainbow trout but ten definitely has river otters.
We use quid like Americans use bucks. Also, we use the term notes instead of bills.
Yes, our notes are colourful and different sizes to make distinguishing easier, with the monarch's portrait on the front and significant cultural figures on the back. There are also multiple measures incorporated to make counterfeiting harder: the window they mentioned has a smaller portrait and a holographic emblem unique to each note value; a couple of lenticular holograms that change as you move them; the 'Bank of England' text is slightly proud of the note; and there is an ultraviolet note value on the front. There are other features, as well.
Fifty pound notes are often a sign of either suspicion or tourist, since they are the two most common places to get them. Many places don't accept them simply because they can't afford the risk of such a high-value note being fake, regardless of their nature as legal tender.
Something they get wrong is their suggestion that old money forms lose their value once they're superceded; this isn't true, they may not be legal tender anymore but you can still take them to any bank to be replaced like for like with the current equivalent, even with the old currency system used up until the mid- to late-20th century.
"Spending a penny" comes from a period when fees of a few pennies were required to use public toilets.
Scotland and Northern Ireland has different notes to those in England and Wales. In England the Bank of England prints the money but in Scotland and Northern Ireland each bank bank issue there own notes.
The quid name comes from where a lot of paper notes came from until a couple of months ago, Quidhampton in north hampshire.
UK coins whilst still used to pay for things are also used for vending machines - I have yet to encounter a public vending machine in the UK that takes bank notes (I have only seen note to coin conversion machines and ones that also take credit cards) - unlike in America where nearly every vending machine I encountered took dollar bills...
Also in the UK a lot of shopping trolleys are locked and a pound coin is used to unlock them - thus encouraging their return (you get the pound back). On public transport you are encouraged to have the exact change for the fare.
One of the reasons why it is called pound Stirling is that it was the weight measurement of an silver Anglo Saxon coin called the Sterling.. Measuring the coins by weight was a way of checking the value was correct and not nibbled at. The Sterling is thought by some to get its namer from being the estetlings coin. But that is disputed.