Quality of Banknotes

[Le Baron]

UK bank notes still contain rendered animal fat
**cking disgusting.

This is for greasing your palm.

 

[PaulMB]

Where I live people still like cash. I think it's because the taxes are acceptable to the UK population that the switch to cards was so much faster. Many decent bars and some restaurants and small shops in Germany still refuse anything but cash.

There is nothing wrong with cash. All that stuff about "safety" and "convenience" is mostly useful to the financial institutions that run credit cards, and make money out of it. I find cash very convenient, don't have to muck about with card readers and codes, the person you are paying is generally happier, and nobody is tracing the way you spend your money. Also essential in flea markets.
As for stamping out tax evasion, I suppose to some extent it works, on a very low level, but tax evaders have all sorts of ways of evading.

 

[richardg]

There is nothing wrong with cash. All that stuff about "safety" and "convenience" is mostly useful to the financial institutions that run credit cards, and make money out of it. I find cash very convenient, don't have to muck about with card readers and codes, the person you are paying is generally happier, and nobody is tracing the way you spend your money. Also essential in flea markets.
As for stamping out tax evasion, I suppose to some extent it works, on a very low level, but tax evaders have all sorts of ways of evading.

Right. I only assume it gets the skim of the scamming. But it's possibly driven by the stores here, not consumers. Most people in Germany are employees compared to UK (entrepreneurial flare does not seem so evident for some reason) so they don't have as many opportunities to fiddle. There's no reason for them to want to avoid cards. But for the small business is a different matter innit.

 

[Le Baron]

As for stamping out tax evasion, I suppose to some extent it works, on a very low level, but tax evaders have all sorts of ways of evading.

True. All really large purchases are done with credit transfers, and always have been. Cash is for smaller purchases and as such not a major source of tax dodging. In aggregate? Probably not even that.

 

[robbyd]

A friend of mine didn't like the plastic 20 notes when they came in ... said they scratched his nose

 

[Colin L]

Bank notes? never been the same after we left the Gold Standard. Bah humbug.

 

[cobbers]

UK bank notes still contain rendered animal fat
**cking disgusting.

Can't use your credit or debit card either then

 

[gintonic]

not handled cash in about three years

 

[Musicman19]

Your profile shows you are from Cleveland. Is that Ohio or Somerset, so USD or GBP? Either way I've not noticed, but will experiment when I get up, if I remember.

Its Clevedon North Somerset

 

[Eyebroughty]

Only use cash to pay for getting my hair cut, cashline every 6 months to cover the haircuts, thought the £20 notes were monopoly money, they are tiny, same as what you can buy with them now

 

[BTC3]

Uk here I was told in a boozer that it was fake so popped to the bank with it next day to show them and they confirmed it was genuine but looked like it had a hard life maybe been through a washing machine a few times, just found a fiver now and the inks coming off it with just scratching. Doesn't fill people businesses with confidence if the inks coming off them like a scratch card does when you scrape them?

The current generation of GBP banknotes are printed on a polypropylene material. You can’t print the detailed image of the note on that in its natural state, so it received a special ink adhesion layer as a primer, then the print, then a layer of protective varnish over that. Where paper notes get dirty, these plastic ones “wear” aka the ink rubs off. It just happens. Where the Bank of England and the manufacturer say they last longer, it’s to do with them not getting dirty (the “wear” takes longer than paper notes get dirty) and the plastic being less easy to tear unless you give it a head start. So you being able to scrape the ink off is unfortunate, but not unheard of. To check if it’s real, take a close look at the hologram, and the letters/colour combination that appear on both sides of the note. It was so much easier with paper notes that had a watermark and a security thread, but apparently plastic notes are progress.

The BoE must have had to outsource to a cheaper printer for all of the money that they are issuing these days

Nope, same printer as always, and the plastic notes are, per unit, more expensive per piece than the paper ones.

UK bank notes still contain rendered animal fat
**cking disgusting.

It’s an absolutely tiny percentage of the process, and you’d be hard pressed to find any trace of it on the note. It’s used as a lubricant in the extrusion of the plastic that forms the sheet on which the note is printed. Alternatives, like palm oil, were investigated as replacements, but you open up a whole other can of worms if you go down that route. I think retaining the tallow was seen as the lesser of the available evils.

 

[cobbers]

It’s an absolutely tiny percentage of the process

IIRC 0.05%

 

[Le Baron]

The BoE must have had to outsource to a cheaper printer for all of the money that they are issuing these days

Only a tiny percentage of issued money is represented physically. Likely even less these days than when issue was more throttled...cashless payments and all.

 

[BTC3]

IIRC 0.05%

Indeed, the quote is “less than 0.05%”, which puts it at less than 0.04g per note. I’m not suggesting it doesn’t offend sensibilities, but it’s been in the manufacturing process since it was invented in the 1980s and an effective alternative hasn’t yet been found.