Post by yenilira on Feb 15, 2011 1:18:50 GMT 1
……..we changed from Pounds, Shillings, and Pence to what we use today – Pounds and Pence.
Yes, today is the 40th Anniversary of “Decimalisation Day” or “D-Day” as some of the younger generation would have it.
15th February 1971.
How many of you were accused of being cynical when you reckoned ‘They’ had ripped us of by a “few bob” or even for a ‘few bob’?
And how many of you have never known the half-crown, the ten-bob note, the tanner, the florins, thruppenny-pieces/bits, halfpennies, farthings – bawbees even?
Or the joy of finding one, or more, of those coins in your stocking on Christmas Day Morning?
To assist the change-over, both currencies ran concurrently for a while, but didn’t that have its own problems – causing confusion to and for the older folk especially?
What about that horrendous Arithmetic question at school of – “How much does twenty hundredweight of coal cost at one pound 17 shillings and elevenpence three farthings per cwt.?"
And you didn’t have the benefit of a calculator in those days!
There were also complaints that prices were being hiked: true, things did tend to be rounded up,
but then again, this was also a time of a very inflationary period.
I can still remember drinking “Carlsberg Specials” just before the change-over – at one shilling and nine pence a bottle.
I daren’t ask how much it is now.
(Just checked on Google – I don’t think they do them anymore, at least not in the way we knew then).
Blackpool were playing the likes of Arsenal, Man. Unt., and Liverpool then –
did we ever think those days would come back again……….?
YL.
Yes, today is the 40th Anniversary of “Decimalisation Day” or “D-Day” as some of the younger generation would have it.
15th February 1971.
How many of you were accused of being cynical when you reckoned ‘They’ had ripped us of by a “few bob” or even for a ‘few bob’?
And how many of you have never known the half-crown, the ten-bob note, the tanner, the florins, thruppenny-pieces/bits, halfpennies, farthings – bawbees even?
Or the joy of finding one, or more, of those coins in your stocking on Christmas Day Morning?
To assist the change-over, both currencies ran concurrently for a while, but didn’t that have its own problems – causing confusion to and for the older folk especially?
What about that horrendous Arithmetic question at school of – “How much does twenty hundredweight of coal cost at one pound 17 shillings and elevenpence three farthings per cwt.?"
And you didn’t have the benefit of a calculator in those days!
There were also complaints that prices were being hiked: true, things did tend to be rounded up,
but then again, this was also a time of a very inflationary period.
I can still remember drinking “Carlsberg Specials” just before the change-over – at one shilling and nine pence a bottle.
I daren’t ask how much it is now.
(Just checked on Google – I don’t think they do them anymore, at least not in the way we knew then).
Blackpool were playing the likes of Arsenal, Man. Unt., and Liverpool then –
did we ever think those days would come back again……….?
YL.