50 years today

[jimmycowman]

Good bye old penny....

[jimmycowman]

[clubconsoles]

Can vaguely remember emptying old pennies out out my piggy bank, for my mum to change at the post office!
My Question is, what prompted this change of coinage, we didn't enter the common market until 1973?

[brigham]

Joining the Common Market was just the continuation of an undercover movement to denigrate Britain and British culture, which had begun in the 1950s.
Remember the Worboys Report on British road signs? The press summed it up the very next day after publication: "Britain's new Continental Road Signs".
Then there was the ridiculous 'new electrical flex colours' farce. Let's make the wire that kills you brown, instead of red.
The ever repeated buzz-phrase was 'into line with Europe'. The very thing that my father's generation had so recently fought against!

[treefrog]

Of all the changes people grumble about this one made so much sense. We really would have been in the dark ages if we had stuck with a non decimal system for payment and of course this had nothing to do with Europe and had been considered many times over the decades. Also all other places like Australia, South Africa etc who were stuck in the old system had already changed before us... Are there any countries in the world not using decimal?

Also you wouldn’t have been able to have a moan about post decimal or pre decimal machines as they would have continued to this day and we would be overloaded with old machines.

So cheers to decimalisation

[john t peterson]

Some call it "evolution," others "evilution." One of the practical effects from my perspective was massive exodus of pre-decimal coin operated games to the United States. That change coupled with the legalization of slot machines supercharged my collection. So, a tip of the hat to "progress."

J Peterson
Selectively progressive in USA

[tallstory]

Then there was the ridiculous 'new electrical flex colours' farce.

No, this wasn't done just for the sake of it. A form of colour blindness, known as Daltonism, is common in many people. It makes distinguishing red and green difficult and the change to stripey green and brown was done to overcome this (potentially lethal) problem.

[brigham]

The change of red and black was not guided by Daltonism.
A stripe to the Earth wire alone would have eliminated any such confusion.
The other changes were down to Internationalism- the Germans for instance using Red for Earth!
Or, as the same old bleat goes, Bringing Britain "into line with Europe".

[badpenny]

Fifty years ago today a gormless looking 17 year old on the bus to work in Coventry was listening to the moaning and wittering going on around him.
In a lapse of anything vitriolic to say one old girl piped up ...
"Why didn't they just wait for all the old people to die before bringing this in?"

It was at this point that our 17 year old realised it's a good idea to control your facial expressions and keep your opinions to yourself when you're out numbered. Having roared with laughter and guffawed mercilessly, he decided it was safer to get off at the next stop and walk into work.

BP

[brigham]

It's good to be back on topic.
Sorry for rambling... it's a bad habit of mine.
Does anyone know if the massive inflation in the 'seventies was CAUSED by decimalisation, or or whether decimalisation was an excuse to devalue the pound via inflation?