Point counterpoint
Sir: The present furore over the seven- sided 50p piece (`Spectator's notebook', 25 October) is not unexpected. To anyone who had taken the trouble to study the decimal coinage system it was obvious that this gimmicky coin would cause trouble. But it can easily be changed in colour to yellow and might then be acceptable under the present clumsy system.
It is, however, becoming more and more evident that the ten shilling unit should have been adopted (as it was in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand), thereby preserving a more flexible currency with small values as in Continental and American currencies, all of which have a unit con- siderably smaller than the £.
At the same time as it is proposed to adopt this crude monetary unit (the new penny) it appears that the new British Standard for drawing office practice is to be too fine a unit (the millimetre), against the recognised practice (the centimetre) of the rest of the world. The centimetre is to remain as a linear measurement in Europe and elsewhere and none of the misguided recommendations made to date by this country will change this fact.
How crazy can we get? J. R. Ashe 40 Park Way, Meals, Hoylake, Cheshire
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