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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/in-praise-old-money
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| In praise of … old money | In praise of … old money |
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| It has been billed as a boring budget, but it emerges that George Osborne will do something about the pound in all our pockets – saying "out" with the small gold coins of the 1980s, and "in" with a tribute to a forgotten lump of 1930s shrapnel, the old thrupenny bit. It is a nostalgic, ahem, quid pro quo, aimed, cynics might say, at Ukip voters' yearning for lost times. But don't dismiss the move to put dodecagons in every till, which could do sterling service for the study of geometry. Imagine the effect on arithmetical agility if the chancellor went further and introduced the full quirk of imperial currency, which effectively required shoppers to operate in base 12 (pennies in a shilling) and base 20 (shillings in a pound), while those lucky enough to be handling guineas (21 shillings) needed abacuses with even stranger numbers of beads on each row. That would, once and for all, scotch the myth about the old days being simpler times. | It has been billed as a boring budget, but it emerges that George Osborne will do something about the pound in all our pockets – saying "out" with the small gold coins of the 1980s, and "in" with a tribute to a forgotten lump of 1930s shrapnel, the old thrupenny bit. It is a nostalgic, ahem, quid pro quo, aimed, cynics might say, at Ukip voters' yearning for lost times. But don't dismiss the move to put dodecagons in every till, which could do sterling service for the study of geometry. Imagine the effect on arithmetical agility if the chancellor went further and introduced the full quirk of imperial currency, which effectively required shoppers to operate in base 12 (pennies in a shilling) and base 20 (shillings in a pound), while those lucky enough to be handling guineas (21 shillings) needed abacuses with even stranger numbers of beads on each row. That would, once and for all, scotch the myth about the old days being simpler times. |
| • This article was amended on 19 March 2014. An earlier version said there were 21 guineas in a pound. A guinea was 21 shillings (or one pound and one shilling). |