Re: there goes a tenner lyrical question

[Bryan Dongray <btd@cray.com>]

Actual closing lines:
	Ooh, there goes a tenner.
	Hey, look! There's a fiver.
	There's a ten-shilling note.
	Remember them?
	That's when we used to vote for him.

The UK changed from pounds, shillings, pence, into pounds and "new" pence
on 15 Feb 1971 - Oh dear I still remember some TV jingles explaining
some conversions, eg "sixpence is 2 and a half new pence"

Old money had 12 pennies to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound.
New money had 100 pence to a pound. The pound stayed the same value.
There was initially the 1/2 new pence, but that was phased out by the 80s.
A couple of old money coins could be used as their direct conversion,
namely the shilling coin = 5 pence, and two shilling coin = 10 pence.
These have recently been converted to new coin, so old money is no more.
The words "new" disappeared off coins from about 1984/5 it was not
particularly advertised, the coins stayed the same, just the wording.

The 10 shilling note, a small brownish note was phased out in October 1968
I'm not sure about October, but it was 1968.

How anyone ever did mathematics with old money must have been amazing.

Old money had various coins and notes:
	farthing (quarter of penny)
	ha'penny (half a penny - prounced hay-penny)
	1d	(huge great brown thing)
	3d	(thup-pence - small 12 sided brass/gold coloured coin)
	6d	(sixpence, as in "sing a song of...", small & silver
		much like the US dime)
	1s	(much like the US nickel)
	2s	(big silver thing)
	2/6d	(half a crown, even bigger)
	5s	(crown, phased before I remember)
	10s note	(small brown)
	1 pound note	(bigger and green)
	5 pound note	(even bigger and blue)
	10 pound note	(bigger still and brown)
I'm not sure about bigger values notes.
Also the farthing and halfpenny was phased out before I was born.

Now (once the half new pence is gone), there is:
	1p 2p 5p
	10p 20p 50p
	#1 #2 #5
	#10 #20 #50
1p and 2p bronze.
5p and 10p silver.
20p and 50p silver - 7 sided.
#1 and #2 coins gold colour (although the #2 is not really used, much
				like the $2 bill is rarely used)
#5 upwards are notes.

What I like about UK notes over US bills, is that there is size and
colour difference, you can tell them at a distance, and if you're blind.
UK notes have had water marks and metal strips in them for *years* as
antifraud, US bills has only just started this, and only on the larger
denominations, it's a start I suppose.

The other nice feature of UK money is the similar step sizes, makes working
out change very easy. Doing some mental calculations on US money, to get
nice change is sometimes awkward, having 1, 5, 10, and 25 for coins.

Another complaint about US coinage is they do not have the value in digits
on them, so if you don't read English, or have no idea what "dime" means,
you have no idea of the value! I've been told US coins are the only in
the world not to have digits on them, obviously the US mint don't like
tourism! Or perhaps they just want to rob tourists!

End of history/accountancy lesson! Back to the lyrics...

I believe the politician that Kate is referencing to, was probably either
Harold Wilson (died 1995), or Edward Heath. These were the two political
leaders for most of the 60s and 70s.

I'd not thought about the idea of the song referring to them robbing a bank,
stashing it away, and once out of prison, not being able to spend it because
money has changed. It's a good twist though.

			Bryan Dongray