I know I should – and I know lots of you will be writing in to take it off my hands – but I still can’t take Scottish money seriously. There was a £20 note sitting around on our table for about three days the other week because even though I knew intellectually that it was money, it just didn’t look real enough to bother picking up*. And I had to stare long and hard at the funny looking pieces of paper I found in my jeans pocket the other day before I remembered that I’d taken twenty quid out of a Glasgow cash machine a couple of nights before, on an evening when I was reliving my student days and substituing beer (well, Guinness, a meal in itself) for food.
The problem is, it’s not just that there are Scottish notes to get used to, it’s more complicated than that: every bank in Scotland issues its own. So while I’ve more or less got used to the Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland ones, these were Clydesdale bank ones, and boy do they look strange. I’d take a photo and post it, but it’s probably illegal.
Everyone up here has a story of ignorant English shops refusing to take their fine Caledonian banknotes. But when you’ve got a note like the Clydesdale tenner, with no sign of Brenda and what appears to be a map of somewhere in Africa on the back (part of Scotland’s extensive empire, no doubt) you can hardly blame them for looking askance at it. Zimbabwe has produced more convincing looking banknotes
My top tip: if the Scots really want to tick the English off – and I’m sure they do – they should stop messing around printing their own, and adopt the Euro. Because that would really put the cat among the pigeons.
*Fortunately, the other half is made of sterner stuff, being a recovering accountant.
I don’t know about photographing Scottish notes, but do an image search for other currency and you’ll find plenty. Go ahead — we won’t report you
Ah, true.
I mean, does this look like real money to you? (Having said that, people seem to be flogging them on ebay…)
I wouldn’t know what a ‘proper’ £20 note looks like as it’s been a while since I last saw one!
As for leaving one on the table for three days…
Love your comment about adopting the Euro! xx
Yeah well we don’t get out to the shops that often, which is one way of saving money…
How to annoy a Scottish person: Point out that their funny money is NOT legal tender in England and Wales. It’s a very narrow technical point (the definition of ‘Legal Tender’) and I have seen may a Scot get very upset if you tell them. Tee hee. Most big shops in E&W (and all high street banks) will however accept funny money, with problems directly proportional to the distance from the Scottish border (or Kings Cross).
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/about/faqs.htm#16
@CentralUser
Annoying the English too – since only Bank of England notes with a face value less than five pounds are legal tender in Scotland. Since the last was demonetised in 1984, there are no notes that are legal tender in Scotland (not even Scottish ones)
Anyway – how to disconcert a Scottish shopkeeper (no, not asking for discount) – when they have the audacity to hand you a Bank of England note, reject it (preferably using a plummy English accent) with a comment along the lines of “what is this rubbish, give me proper money please”. The look on their face is magic
I think I’ll leave it to you to tell them. I have to live here. (I notice that from your link that it’s an offence to reproduce bank notes, so I still think I was wise not to post a photo)
Yes, I was experiencing similar bafflement the other day, squinting at my Scottish twenty and wondering where and who the bloody hell the back was depicting. (If memory serves, a squiggle of coastline and someone with splendid facial hair – and *no caption*).
But I’m afraid I’m anti-Euro all the way. I love funny money. It’s got character, it keeps people in a job, and it fights off the incessant tides of bland bureaucratic nihilism that would have us living in a perfectly uniform world, moving in unison towards identical goals.
But it *is* funny looking. And I like how they have to dust off lots of famous historical figures.
(With this in mind, I bet Belgium is breathing a sigh of relief that it went down the Euro route).
In fact, that may actually explain the Euro…
Mind you, it’s quite fun seeing the look on the face of an Englandshire resident when explaining that up here there are five different kinds of fiver.
(I like the really old one with the wee timorous beastie on the back)
Not to mention the old ‘Scottish fiver’ – a tightly folded up pound note to be used in crowded, dimly lit London pubs. Not that I ever did that…
As much as I like Scottish banknotes with their couthy assortment of missionaries and poets, I’d swap them all tomorrow for the Euro.
We were conned out of joining the Euro in the interests of the bankers and currency speculators and look where that got us! As a country that produces very little in the way of tangible goods, we should probably be seeking the protection offered to our imports by a larger currency. But, hey, who would get rich out of that…?
Hmmm. Wonder how difficult it would be for Scots to just sort of ‘unofficially’ adopt it…
Will probably post a longer comment on this when back home and not paying £1 or 2 Euros for 20mins on’t web (interesting conversion rate Premier Inn!), but I luuurve Scottish notes, maybe in the blood. As for the Euro I am emphatically for, BUT the French and Germans keep telling me how clever the Brits were for not adopting it – the trick is to join at a rate advantageous to us, not like Greece, Spain & the new Eastern lot who are REALLY feeling the pain of this downturn and can do nothing about is fiscally. The French want to separate out their debt to EU into before and durung ‘crise’, in order to avoid the fines. That said, no-one else in Europe has taken the Zimbabwe option of ‘Quantative Easing’!
PS Won’t post an even longer comment – disgruntled doesn’t need to block sender, yet!
j