Another voice

Reforming the currency

Auberon Waugh

Iseem to be the only person in England who likes the new double florin. I like everything about it — its size, shape, design, even its novelty.

The size strikes me as not only convenient but also logical, being little bigger than the old sixpenny piece which Londoners were said to call a 'tanner'. In fact, it has almost exactly the same value — in terms of beer, cigarettes, Mars Bars and potato crisps as the 'tanner' had when I was a boy of ten. By the same token, the florin or 10p piece is worth exactly the same as the old threepence — surely as good a reason as any for introducing a new florin the size of the old silver threepenny piece. The new sovereign will have the same value as the old half-crown, which was a beautiful coin, not inordinately large for its purchasing power. With the introduction of a new shilling (the former 5p coin) half the size of the old silver threepenny bit and the abolition of bronze coinage with the unpleasing 50p piece, we would then have a coinage which would suit our needs, as well as being readily distinguishable by the blind: a shilling or half-florin the lowest denomination; then a florin, being the size of the old silver threepenny bit; a double-florin, being hep- tagonal — and a sovereign, the size and weight of the old half-crown. For those who have the misfortune to be both blind and fingerless, it might be a good idea to impregnate each denomination with a dif- ferent aroma, like potato crisps — cheese and onion, bacon and roast chicken, pep- permint chocolate etc. This might also help us find coins dropped in the dark or bet- ween floorboards.

The virtues of the proposed arrangements are obvious. The system would be truly deci- mal, but based on the florin. It would cater for the special needs of blind people and the physically handicapped without further in- conveniencing those who are deaf, incon- tinent or female. It would remove the penny and its unfortunate Victorian associa- tions with poverty from our language, and, even better, it would remove the horrible `new pee' and its even worse associations with Edward Heath. The new pee, like its creators, has been devalued out of ex- istence. A popular act of statesmanship would be to allow those who still possess old silver threepenny bits and half-crowns to circulate them and use them in slot machines as new florins and new sovereigns respectively. This would encourage thrift.

If it is decided to switch from a decimal to a binary system the new denominations will remain, with a 'strong pound' being the equivalent of eight 'sovereigns' as the old half-crown will now be called. Double florins (20p or 4/-) will quite simply be re-

christened crowns (25p or 5/-), florins re- christened half-crowns, and the shilling, while still called a shilling, will be worth 1/3d or 6.25p. This will be a prodigiously popular move among collectors of small change, but will have no economic effect beyond adjusting the coinage to an infla- tion of 25 per cent and leaving the Treasury with the option that in the face of further inflationary pressure it will re-decimalise, with a 'strong pound' or ten 'sovereigns', reducing the value of crowns to double florins, half-crowns to florins, and shillings to their previous level of 20 to the sovereign, against the binary 16. Since the international unit would be the strong pound, this would have the effect of impos- ing a domestic devaluation in rather the same way (although for different reasons) that the Romans debased their coinage — a practice which kept the Roman Empire go- ing for 300 years.

The purpose behind all these Waugh Reforms will be the same: to convince organised labour in the most graphic way possible that whatever gigantic wage in- creases it may award itself, it will effectively be no better off unless it works more pro- ductively or (God forbid) harder. That is the main reason, also, why I welcome the new Thatcher double florin or 20p piece, specially designed (as it might well have been) for persons of restricted growth to carry in their tiny little pockets. It strikes me as a very good joke to give them mutilated 'tanners' and tell them they are double florins, just as it would be an even plainer lesson to give them unreconstituted half-crowns and tell them they are pounds.

Perhaps a dawning awareness that something of the sort was happening ex- plains why bus conductors on Merseyside decided to go on strike against the new 20p coin. The actual reason they gave was slightly different: their money containers were not adjusted to receive the new coins, so rather than simply refuse them they went out on strike and stopped all bus services on Merseyside. Poor things. It must have been hell for them having to cope with these new coins, their fingers already crabbed and mutilated by countless industrial accidents, by inadequate housing, by the spectre of unemployment, by the freezing cold up north, rotten wages, frankly non-existent day-care facilities in many cases ... much worse than for southern bus conductors. No wonder they went on strike.

That said, one must also admit that as a tax-paying resident of Somerset I could not really give a halfpenny, let alone one of these nice new 20p pieces, whether a single Liverpudlian ever drives another bus. That seems to be their decision. Similarly, one

Spectator 19 June 1982 could not help being a little bit moved by the decision of 40,000 of Arthur Scargill's Yorkshire miners to come out on strike in sympathy with the nurses and ancillary workers of the Health Service. It was a splendid example of northern working' class logic to suppose that if the Coal Board loses money, more money will be available for the Health Service to pay nurses and an' ciliary workers. Taken together, the Merseyside busmen, Newcastle ambulance drivers and Yorkshire miners provide an ad- mirable illustration of what might be called the Northern Problem.

This Northern Problem is not to be con- fused with the southern trade union or left' wing alternative problem, as exemplified bbMoss Evans, Clive Jenkins, Tony Benn Ken Livingstone. With the next gerieraci. election apparently in the bag he unemployment at three million, Government would be very odd indeed it " did not take steps to defeat the trade unions — chiefly by making it less attractive t° belong to them, and much less attractive to go on strike — and isolate the wreckers' Apart from anything else, these would-be politicians offer a challenge to the Tories:, exercise of power. We need not w°1:, about them. The Northern Problem much less tractable, being composed for:thcei most part of a certain attitude of Mill among some two or three million fellow citizens, all geographically identifiable, *4° happen to be stupid, ignorant, incurably'lazy, bloody-minded in their attitude !leo work, generally unemployable and host' to any help except endless gifts of money'

Why, it might be said, should we vi°_,,,r K

" about them? I do not know, but politicians are born worriers. I suppose that until can put them on a separate national grid they might interfere with our electricity soFt; ply; their militant sympathisers in the South might be able to obstruct our importing °f foreign coal. As soon as a Northern Proli blem is acknowledged to exist, we Must d, agree that problems are made to be s°Ive e

Last week, I listened for some time to on of our legislators explaining his soluti°11 to the Falkland Islands Problem. Wila,` ,0

her should do, he said, was to drop an°t 1,- e atom bomb on Japan. This would have "- effect of bringing the world to its senses; as ,,;s for the Japanese, they were used to Wi'd treatment and would accept it as their w°11_ role. In the same spirit, I offer my solutiont to the Northern Problem: the GovernMeriA should stop all aid to the North-East an North-West (least of all should it subsidise replacement for 'Lord' Maffews's Allan, e' Conveyor from Swan Hunter of Newcastle costing £20 million more than the same "rt from a Japanese shipyard); instead it should offer extravagant bribes to any Liverpool or Newcastle family prepare settle in the Falklands; when enough them have done so — say 60,000 or 100'`Ts in all — it should cede the wretched islanut to Argentina and refuse any right °' repatriation.it

This may not be the best solution, but is the best I can do.