The first list I found of her meeting US presidents: https://time.com/5333083/queen-elizabeth-trump-visit-preside...
She didn't have to be elected..
By the time Turing was convicted that power is in effect in control of the Lord Chancellor, part of the British Government. Today although the title is the same, a Lord Chancellor would likely be an MP (ie elected, albeit not to do that specific job) but at the time Turing was convicted I assume it was a Peer (so, not elected) but chosen by the Prime Minister of the day (who is elected).
The most recent notable exercise of this power by the British government was to reduce the sentence for a murderer who (during day release) tackled some terrorist lunatic and thereby likely saved some people's lives.
I look to Switzerland with envy, where as far as I can tell you can stroll into the supermarket and drop a 1000-franc note without issue.
I have heard this since I was a kid, in reality, it isn't true, at least not in London. I have never been refused when presenting a £50, not that I have carried them more than a dozen times. Most places that have issues taking them are small merchants who give away too many notes breaking them, so will often ask for a smaller note. When I was in New York once, I went into a CVS and bought $60 of sweets to bring home, the cashier shouted 'bill check' when i presented a $100 bill, so I guess I look more dodgey in the US.
It's just dumb. UK government should definitely drive a larger adoption of the £50 notes, it's so bizzaire to me that the British population treats their own banknotes like something from the moon.
Very difficult to get contactless working in the midst of the Cheviots.
- I don’t really think the problem is forgery. I think it’s that it is annoying for a lot of shops to make change for £50.
- I don’t think the government is particularly interested in making cash more convenient for people (card transactions are easier to track) and wealthy people mostly aren’t interested in carrying around high-value notes as credit cards exist.
edit: to add to that, it used to be that £1 coins were the most forged in sterling cash. I can't say if that's still the case, but at one point it felt like 1 in 3 pound coins were a fake.
That was what we were told back when I worked in a small shop in a theme park in the late 90s. That combined with the fact that because we rarely saw them people tended to be worse at picking out fakes than they were with smaller denomination notes.
We were to ask people to go to the cash office at the front of the site to have large notes swapped for smaller currency, £10 and lower. The reason we gave the customer (which as you mention had the benefit of also being true, even though I was very much given the impression it wasn't management's primary concern) was that it would take all the change from out tills. We would accept £20s, though the sign up front suggested they be changed first too.
> solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down
The recognisability helps with lower denomination notes though. And taking a forged £50 is more of a hit than taking a forged £10 amongst others.
> Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created.
The solution we are heading towards, more rapidly now due to C19's effects, is cashless. I still have a few coins in my running pouch in case I need to use a non-free public convenience and a few of notes in my wallet just in case the cards fail, but I don't think I've actually used cash at all in the last 12 months and that may remain the case once This is all over (there is a local corner shop that won't take contactless or other card payments for less than £10 - I simply don't go to that shop any more as that is inconvenient for me for single small items so I do without for now or walk further, and for needs >£10 I'll walk further to a larger store with more options anyway).
The £50 notes were perceived as "most likely forged" because - in addition to being temptingly large denominations - they're so rare the average person has never used one and doesn't really know what they look like. There's a vicious circle of course: ATMs don't dispense them and banks are unlikely to unless requested because they're not widely accepted. The £20 note doesn't have that problem.
I’m sure (as far as bars go) contactless payment will be preferred more in future. COVID has sped up the process of that. It’s unlikely to see many £50 notes around. There were already a lot of “card only” bars in London and that was pre-COVID.
Also inflation is low and will be low for quite some time so that won’t be a factor.
£20 in 1994 was £10 in 1981 - 13 years before.
£20 in 1981 was £10 in 1975
Before that 1969 and 1950
So that’s doubling in 19,6,6,13,26
So inflation is at long time record lows despite the last period including the 08 crash and covid
Hop over to Switzerland, and you can buy a coffee with a 1000 franc (GBP780) note without any issues.
(Serious price comparison: I walked over the St Bernard's pass from Switzerland to Italy. In Switzerland, we paid €6.50 for mediocre commercial ice cream. Over the border in Italy, €2 for the most incredible gelato. Although it may be that walking down a mountain to get it improves your perception of an ice-cream.)
I guess everyone is so used to Digital Payment and do not want to deal with the hassle of cash.
Personally I love cash.
Nope. He didn't. Just the way pop culture likes their nerds to act.
I'm not showing off, and I don't mean to say my opinion is correct, but let's just say I have at least some claim to know what was going on.
I watched the Imitation Game with my wife who knew little to nothing about Bletchley park and Turing. I have to say, that given 90 minutes I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
I can say with confidence that pretty much everything said or shown in every scene is significantly inaccurate, but taken as a whole, and with an understanding of the restrictions, it's a very good job.
If you can't live without knowing the specific truth, read Hodges. If you can, just watch the film then get on with something else.
In 1939 the Poles basically dumped an absolutely massive amount of information they had worked out about enigma on the British and the French. The Poles had a working system to decrypt enigma from (I think) 1932 up to 1939 when the Germans added more rotors to the machines increasing the complexity significantly. The Polish techniques still worked with the new rotors but the additional complexity slowed them down a lot.
I maybe remembering this incorrectly but I think the Poles managed to construct machines logically identical to enigma machines (i.e. the same output for every input) based just on messages they'd intercepted (without ever seeing an actual enigma machine). They gave one of these machines to the French and one to the British.
The "Bombe" built in Bletchly park was directly inspired by the Polish "Bomba" machines.
It did dumb down in some horrible areas however. There was a overdone conflict between him and his superiors and peers - until they too realised he was right in Hollywood fashion. The actual code breaking was ... "my god what if they put Heil Hitler at the end of each message. We could use the new computer you have built to break the message and then put the play on right here."
But to be fair I don't think even I would have sat through ten minutes of Cumberbatch explaining cipher theory to get a proper grip on that.
Overall, its a good way to introduce the kids to the origin of computers, the need to stick to your principles, and prejudice is bad.
It seems to me that it would have been more appropriate for it to have officially asked for his forgiveness, instead.
I'm no collector, I just think it's cool that Turing is on a bank note, and I want one.
After that sure, they're just money, if you want to be certain to obtain one of these, particularly in mint condition you may end up paying a bit more than it's "worth" but you seemingly don't intend to spend it so that shouldn't matter.
I'm not sure if they're a thing in the US, but in many countries there are places which sell stamps, coins and notes to collectors, and here I'd expect to find at least one in a large town or city, people like that would understand what you want here, although their prices would likely be significantly higher than just going to an international airport and asking to buy a £50 note from them once they have the new kind.
A brief aside about why people won't have the old ones for long. Unlike the US, the UK actually replaces notes. Pre-Turing notes given to banks will gradually be destroyed and then in not so long the government will declare that they are no longer to be used. They don't become worthless, but shops won't take them, and then high street banks won't take them, until eventually the only place that will is the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, they will always honour the old note, since it says it is worth Fifty Pounds and they issued it, but of course all you get is a newer Fifty Pound note that still works, a fun ritual to do once maybe if you don't live too far away.
This means ordinary British people needn't have the expertise to authenticate genuine 100 year old money, none of it is valid any more - while if you find some down the back of your couch, it isn't worthless, it's just maybe not very convenient to go to Threadneedle Street if you found an archaic banknote that's now worth less than it'd cost to get there.
Also of course eventually (many years from now) the old notes will be worth more than £50 to collectors because they become rare, even though at Threadneedle Street you can only ever get £50 for them.
The caveat is because places with lots of tourists will have their "pocket change" (old notes)
As for a (web) service, I'm not aware of any.
International airports and many major banks have currency exchanges. The exchanges take a healthy cut, where your personal bank most likely will not.
Most countries will go with politicians, buildings and warlords.
I have to say that it saddens me to see Darwin go. Considering that the evolution theory is still considered controversial in many places(even in advanced countries like the US) I think it was a very bold move to have him on the note.
> Founded in 1932 as “The Evolution Protest Movement” by a small group of Christians concerned by the propaganda that was promoting the theory of evolution as if scientifically proven
There's a lot of wacky people with wacky ideas in the UK... but I think almost literally nobody disbelieves evolution here. It's just not a thing on anyone's radar and the small component we have of evangelical christianity is strangely quite an urban middle-class thing. I don't think it was bold at all.
If you want an engraved portrait of Gauss, Cliff Stoll will sell you a nice one: https://www.kleinbottle.com/gauss.htm
The £50 note feels like lipservice if anything.
I find that amusing because I suspect that in practice not many shops accept them. It's hard for me to know because despite having lived in the UK for about half a century I've never had a £50 note.
Perhaps they have a plan to bring the new £50 notes into use. If today's cash machines only have the hardware to dispense two kinds of note they could replace the 20s with 50s. But inflation is low and cash is generally on the way out, so probably not, I would guess.
Scottish and other non-English sterling is another matter. Despite being legal tender in England, smaller shops don't see it frequently enough to want to take the risk handling them.
I remember seeing George Galloway on a morning TV show passionately saying why Margaret Thatcher shouldn't be on any notes. At the end of the interview he was asked who was on the £5, £10, £20 notes. He had no clue. I'm sure most of us in the UK don't either.
Cash protects both buyers and sellers more from crazy people.
Rich coming from someone under whose leadership, money laundering was going on:
> Also during his time at the bank, Sands was harshly criticized after Standard Chartered paid New York State $340 million in 2012 to settle claims it laundered money for Iran[0]
The volume is massive: with the most used notes lasting 3-5 years it won't be long until you have a billion plastic notes in circulation.
Introduction of these notes will probably not even be visible in microplastics assays.
The filter could be big and designed to last the life of the machine. It's far better to dispose of a single chunk of solid plastic waste than the billions of particulates that would have gone into waterways...
Not sure if that breaks at laws, IMNAL..
Not sure of the TAM/ SAM/ SOM
