SOME WEEKS AGO I received the sum of
£4 13s. 6d. as change for a purchase I had made out of (as I thought) a £1 note. When I queried the amount, I was told that I had handed over a fiver; and on investigation, I found that I had. It comes as a surprise to me, therefore, to hear a Government spokesman in the Commons assert that a 'very small number of com- plaints have been received' about the new £5 note. Admittedly I was lucky, though not as lucky as Lady Tweedsmuir who —the Commons were informed in the course of this discussion—recently received £4 10s. in change for a £1 note. But presumably many other people have been unlucky—have handed over five pounds by mistake for one, and been done out of four pounds in their change. And north of the border, inevitably, the risk of confusion with the similarly tinted Scottish £1 notes is even greater than it is here. I can see no reason why the Bank of England should have decided on the present £5 note, which deprives the public of the protection it used to have when a fiver, for all its clumsiness, was at least unmistakable for any other currency. If it is really true that there have been few complaints, then I fear this is only a melancholy symptom of the public's tendency to assume that 'they' who decide such things cannot be criticised, because 'they' are in some way privileged, immune from objection.
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