PA Archive
On 15 February 1971, the UK stepped into a bold new era. Switching from the old currency which contained coins such as shillings and crowns, Brits were forced to come to terms with the bewilderingly foreign 'decimal' system of pounds and pence that we know today.
It marked a momentous event, and it's difficult to appreciate now the widespread panic across the country as people worried that they would struggle to adapt to 'thinking in tens' as opposed to the old two-base system of 12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to the pound.
Forty years on from what has come to be known as 'D-Day', we take a wistful look back at some of those pre-decimal coins, and work out what they'd each be worth in today's money.
OMG - Old money was not shillings, farthings, and crowns. It was pounds shillings and pence. Some coins were called shiliings i.e 12 pence like 5p pieces today and farthings have not been used for yonks they were phased out in 1960. Crowns were not in use, they were abolished as normal currency in the early 1900's. In 1971 as per 'old money' There were half crowns i.e 2 shillings and sixpence or equal to 30 pence. The names used above are just names of coins and not a currency. The currency has been pounds since before Tudor times and mixed coinage, some with pet names like 'bob' for a shilling have existed then been phased out like Guineas etc there have been many coins which were components of one pound £1. the £ standing for L as in Libra,
In 1971 you'd be doing quite well if you got £40 per week.
I don't think anyone on £96 per week (40 x 2.4) in 2011 would consider themselves as doing quite well.
Having said that, maybe in 2021 we'll all think £96 per week is better than starving (going by present trends).
We lost so much in the 1960s self respect, family values, our lovely High Streets demolished, half our railways ripped up all for what? Our country today is a dump strewn with litter and populated by common beasts who rut together between filthy sheets in the hope of gaining themselves social housing through more children born out of wedlock. Well done Asia for learning from our mistakes - you deserve to rule in the next century.
Hi
I fail to understand how people are expected to pay for Uni, save for a pension, buy a house, marry, tax insure and run wheels, get to interviews or a job and raise a family whilst eating properly, pay taxes let alone save for a deposit on property and pay off the National Debt now in excess of £1,000,000,000,000 and contribution to the EU of £48,000,000 / day
The reason I do not understand, I think, is because I am logical and not one of the lunatics that ran the asylum into this state
My children and their children will regret the massive overspend of the last 10 years and will pay for the off balance sheet PFI Project billions for the next 30 + years
regards
I don't think any Government would have kept the "old money" - Can't blame Heath for that.
At the end of the sixties electronic calculators became available to offices (forget pocket ones - these were bigger than typewriters) and those calculators were of course decimal.
Somebody foresaw that the world was going to go "electronic" and 240 pennies to a pound was never going to work.
The rip-offs is another matter all together.
Don't start looking for mistakes on here ,they make that many it would become a full time job . Anyway this site is now owned by Americans ,and what do they know about our way of life ,past or present ? .
It would be quicker to say what this author gets right than gets wrong. Stephen Jones, why do they employ you?@ Ex serviceman - I dont recall heath telling lies about common market, in fact not a lot was said - but saying that on the peeps side we didnt dwell on it much at all as didnt really know much about it other than good for french farmers; at a tory /heath meeting in welling kent, I raised this issue with some old guard , their response was leave it to ted & tory s.
Needless to say I didnt vote for them- but moving on successive govts have lied continuously about it and in doing so showed us, the democratic electorate, what a crappp parliament and dare I say it corrupt system us mugs in uk are tied too.
Seems to me we are on a n economic decline paying more and more for cretins to come up with total nonsense reasons
about anything to do with running uk.
Totally out of order now!
like how much a loaf of bread cost and how this relates to the amount earnt.
that would be more intresting reading i feel.
Read 'The Pocket Book of Neanderthal Vociferation' - pages 93 to 96 - to get a rip-roaring diatribe on the stupidity of the changeover to decimal currency in the UK.
The edict "Give More: Get Change" was everywhere to encourage us all to part with the old coins and be given the useless new ones in exchange. It is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated on the British Public surpassed only by the hokum that joining the European Union would be of benefit to us.
I had to read all the way down to '1 old timer' before I heard mention of the crown. This was still legal tender long after 1971 and I still have some. As to the valuations I think they are valuing the coin to a collector as the values are inconsistent if they were the inflationary value (i.e. a shilling would be worth 12 times that of a penny etc.). Finally, as to the point of prices going up on 'D-day' they didn't all go up, a price of 19/11 was REDUCED to 99.5 p
Although D-day was in 1971, the 50p, 10p and 5p were in circulation for a couple of year before so we could get used to the idea. If we had followed 'option 2' we would have had 100 old pence in a 'new pound' this would have made going into the Euro much easier to sell as we would have not had hundreds of years of history behind 'the pound' so glad we stuck with our good old pound sterling!!
My girlfriend had a pair of thr'penny bits after decimilisation that she didn't have before..