Five, ten, twenty and Fifty pound notes are of less use, technically speaking, than toilet roll...
....How can this be you say - with a tenner you can go to the shop, buy a whole load of groceries, food and whatever, maybe a couple of beers, and make yourself a nice meal, get kinda drunk, whatever. Or you can buy a train ticket somewhere, or you can get into a club, buy a cd, a book...but hold on, I said 'technically' speaking...allow me to explain, and while I'm doing so I'm going to explain a few facts which makes this so called money so worthless...
Anyone who's ever bothered to read the writing on a five, ten or whatever pound note will have read the words that go something similar to the following 'I promise to pay the bearer the amount of Ten pounds' - if you've never read it before take one out now and have a look for yourself. Now, this note will carry the signature (photocopied) of the chairman of the bank of england. The root of the problem lies in what these notes actually are, and let's get one thing straight now - they definitely are not money....
The Royal Mint, in it's official blog says that 'pound sterling' is the official currency of the UK (
http://blog.royalmint.com/30-years-since-the-introduction-of-the-pound-coin/). The oxford dictionary defines 'sterling' as not only being the British currency, but also as 'silver' (
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sterling?q=sterling). I think that anyone reading this knows that a 'pound' is a weight that used to be officially used across England before the switch to the metric system (stay tuned for an in-depth look into the reasons for switching from Imperial to metric). Therefore, a 'pound sterling' is naturally an amount of silver that weighs 1 pound (approx 0.5 kilos). Most people would also probably be familiar with the the story of the development of money as a way of not having to carry around lots of goods, or precious metals, and the banks growing in popularity as a means of storing the goods/metals, and in return receiving paper money, or a type of coin which you can easily carry and trade with. In fact the word 'dollar' originates from the word 'thaller' that means 'weight'.
So the true official currency of the UK is the pound sterling, which is silver. So what are the notes that we carry with us everyday (well, not all of us - check moneyless man Mark Boyle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PuyYVVVkIM )? The pound notes are actually what's known as a 'promissory note'. A promissory note is basically an IOU - a note promising to pay an amount to whoever has it whenever they choose to a cash it in. Well, this is all above board and fair so far, isn't it, you may ask....the bank of england holds the silver and gives out notes so that we don't have to carry all that silver around with us to buy stuff (so kind of them)....and they give everyone who holds a note a solemn promise that they can exchange it for it's value in silver at any time - well, actually, no - that's not actually true....believe it or not it's actually bank of engalnd policy that the notes
cannot be exchanged for silver.....uhh!!?? I hear you thinking - 'but, they promise us that we can on every single note in circulation in the uk'...well, a kind person recently done a freedom of information request and received some quite interesting information back. The BOE actually said that you can't exchange the notes for silver, or anything else of any real value - yep, they actually said that....this must be a recent development right? Because of the credit crunch, right???...Nope - the BOE actually say that it's been this way since 1931!!!...that's enough from me on the subject - check out the actually reply to the request yourself here
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/155700/response/380147/attach/html/3/1.pdf.html ...and that's not all - HM treasury, the money department for the uk actually threw their own 2 cents into the hat too, by saying the same thing - well actaully HM treasury took things a step further by saying that the notes are backed up by
nothing...
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/8097/response/20357/attach/html/2/9%20114%20Reply.pdf.html
So there you have it - the notes that people use around the UK everyday in their millions are actually pretty worthless, which brings me back to my toilet paper point (I mean, my point relating to toilet paper :)....toilet paper is plain - it's not easy to write on, but whatever you did write on there would be easily visible by the reader. Pound notes on the other hand, are covered with all types of crap, making note making very difficult - also, not to mention the more conventional use for toilet paper - a job for which a five pound note I think would bring an unwelcome texture...toilet paper is therefore, technically, much more useful than uk notes.
The repercussions of this knowledge are quite staggering when thought about, but I'll leave that up to you to ponder on...and finally, from my title, the word 'fiat' means 'let it be', and is the technical term for any currency where the value is simply a figure plucked out of thin air...
