Talk:Decimal Day

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[edit] Old/New pennies

Sorry, but being a non-British the following is still not clear to me: what happened with the old pennies (d) on D-day; did they increase in value by a factor of 2.4? Was there a parallel usage of old (d) and new (p) pennies?

Old pennies were withdrawn from circulation altogether. The pound retained the same value as before, but was now split into 100 new pence instead of 240 old pence. So one new penny was worth the same as 2.4 old pence, and the new halfpenny (later withdrawn) was worth 1.2 old pence. As for whether you could still use old pennies for a time after D-day, I believe so but I was not around then. How was the rounding worked out? E.g. could you pay for something costing 8 new pence with, say, a new 5p piece, plus 7 old pennies and a farthing? ( = 7.25 old pence or 3.02 new pence, making a total of just over 8p)

There was an equivalence calculation done, with these numbers;

    (1d   2d)       were worth 1p
    (3d   4d   5d)  were worth 2p     
    (6d   7d)       were worth 3p
    (8d   9d   10d) were worth 4p
    (11d   12d)     were worth 5p

i.e. the amount of old coins in brackets were worth the value of the new coin given. Britmax 17:58, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Part of the campaign leading up to D Day encouraged you to "spend your old coppers in sixpenny lots", where 6d was worth 2.5p.

[edit] NPOV

This article is funny, but is it NPOV? David.Monniaux 09:20, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"What's that in old money" should be preserved if you update it... that phrase has been very common in my lifetime and I wasn't born until 1978. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:35, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I was thinking of "It was handed out in change and accepted for payment but a shopkeeper would never have enough of them to bag a pound's worth for lodgement in the bank. However, being a small, thin coin, they eventually disappeared down drain holes and between floorboards and were never heard of again." – the part on floorboards and drain holes in probably quite anecdotal. :-)
I trust you about the "what's that in old money". For years, many people in France talked in "old francs" or "centimes". Even this year, I've seen somebody complaining about the price of a road remodeling project by quoting the price in old centimes – probably in an attempt to make it sound bigger than it is to people who have difficulties dealing with large sums of money. David.Monniaux 09:40, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It seems relatively NPOV to me (as a Brit born in 1975 who's geeky about these things), albeit that it gives more detail about Irish coinage than British coinage. Decimalisation seems to be quite a quirky thing here. My mother has a jar full of sixpences, for example (old 6d coins), mainly used for putting in Christmas puddings (it's a tradition thing) and similarly kept old shilling and florin coins when they were phased out, more recently. I think a little of the anecdotal-type content is worth keeping. OwenBlacker 21:45, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Merge?

It seems a little odd, though, that most of this article isn't a part of the content at Pound Sterling, £sd or Decimalization. The commentary and content about the 1970s changeover from £sd to decimal pounds should probably be rationalised into one article. I can attempt to tackle this at some point if noone objects / can be bothered. OwenBlacker 21:45, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)

You are right that at the moment something doesn't "sit right" with the organisation of this topic. Although the ground that Pound Sterling covers doesn't really overlap with this, the other two you mention do. British coinage is also very relevant and overlaps. I think decimalization should stay more or less as is because it takes an international perspective, but with some UK/Ireland content scraped out to, say, Decimalization in the UK and Ireland, which would also contain info from here (which would redirect there) and also from British coinage. It seems like a fiddly task to get right, and I for one would be very grateful if you could go ahead and make a fitting job of it. Pcb21| Pete 22:03, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I really do intend to amalgamate all these articles at some point, ok? :o) — OwenBlacker 01:20, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)
Bit late now, though the refactorisation all seems to work quite well. — OwenBlacker 19:48, Jul 10, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] 20p image

A coin of a 20p piece seems odd on an article about decimalisation — the coin didn't exist until over a decade later! I'm gonna comment it out and add 1d and 1p coin images from World Coin Gallery, which grants Wikipedia full permission to use its images — OwenBlacker 19:48, Jul 10, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] ducket

[edit] high on waffle, low on facts

Which government thought up the change? - specifically, who was behind it? Why? What was the rationale behind it? Which government implemented it? (Decimal coinage went into circulation in 1968 - this isn't mentioned.) Who were the ministers responsible for it? What factors influenced it? This is a pretty poor article as it doesn't attempt to give any explanation as to why this policy was forced through, but merely covers the implementation. What about public opinion of the policy? Most people were opposed to it; it didn't have a great deal of public support. There were several towns/villages that refused to change for months, in protest; these should be mentioned. Now, I don't know the answers to these questions, but they're pretty important facts. As it stands, this article really doesn't say much of any relevance!

Another important fact: the official name of the currency unit currently in circulation in the UK is new pence - not simply pence, which still legally refers to a 240th of a pound. This seems undermine the 'history of the penny' series somewhat! 62.253.64.13 04:04, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, a quick examination of the change in my pocket reveals that current British coins simply say "Pence", with "TWO PENCE", "TEN PENCE," etc written across the top, and it's only older coins that say "NEW PENNY" or "NEW PENCE" (the latest one I have in my pocket with the "NEW" rather than the value written out is a 1978 penny, but, since the next oldest coin I have is a 1992 10p, I have no idea when the actual changeover occurred). - SoM 18:46, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
See British coin One Penny - "NEW PENNY (1971–1981) or ONE PENNY (1982–present)". -- ALoan (Talk) 10:27, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Non-decimal simplication?

I wonder, was there any consideration of a non-decimal simplification of the coinage? For example, it seems to me that a rather logical system would've been simply to eliminate the penny as a unit altogether, leaving only pounds and shillings. The old threepence and sixpence could then be simply redefined as quarter-shilling and half-shilling. Would've allowed most of the old coins to remain in circulation while eliminating those denominations that had become inconveniently small due to inflation (penny, halfpenny, farthing)

Would also have prevented England from sucumbing to the decimalization craze that's swept other currencies :-)

Having studied the subject for the past couple of days, the answer seems to be a definate no! 80.42.46.224 17:47, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] D-day?

Was it really called D-day in 1971? Even if so, the expression [[D-day] means the 1944 one only now surely? --JBellis 20:10, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Ultimately D-Day would usually refer to the Normandy landings, but the obvious alliteration lends the phrase for other uses, and this is one such example in the UK. User:Dainamo
According to the BBC's "On This Day":1971: D Day delivers new UK currency (and 1966: Britain to go decimal in 1971 says "On 15 February 1971, otherwise known as "D Day" for Decimal Day, the United Kingdom adopted a decimal currency."). Even the Royal Mint talks about "Getting ready for D-Day" -- ALoan (Talk) 15:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I was 8 years old at the time. For years afterwards whenever someone mentioned D-Day I thought they were referring to Decimalisation day. MortimerCat 11:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pounds, Shillings and Pence

It may seem odd that Pounds Shillings and Pence were abbreviated as L S D, rather than P S p. In fact, the letters L S D derive from Anglo-Norman French: Livres, Sols et Deniers.

Or, indeed, the Latin libra, solidus and denarius. See £sd. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coin images

Shouldn't there be a scale on the images, to show that the old pence coin was much larger ?

-- Beardo 15:04, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pee

Jmcc150 has edited on the understanding that "The government did not call the new coins pee, the public did", but this conflicts with the cited source on Money slang history which says that "Mostly in return we got the 'Pee' (being the official pronunciation of the abbreviation: p for new pence.)" A source is needed for the current statement that The government hoped that in speech the new units would be called "new pence", but the public decided that it was clearer and quicker to call the new coins "pee". - - dave souza, talk 17:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-Decimal Computer Programming

As a British computer geek of mature years, I am old enough to remember some of the issues that arose when performing arithmetic on monetary quantities in pounds, shillings and pence. In fact, I have a vague memory that the version of COBOL implemented on ICL computers in the 1960's had a special PICTURE clause to handle old money. Can anyone else recollect this? --Portnadler 09:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

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