I wonder what Jasper's father would think of switching from Pounds to Euros. A point to ponder, eh?


(for those who don't know, Jasper's father, John Standish Fforde, was the 24th Cashier for the Bank of England, serving from 1966-1970. He signed the money! Ironically, or maybe not so ironically, I'm not sure, Jasper Quintus Hollom served in the position before him. Could that be who Jasper is named for?)

I didn't know that! Where did you dig that fascinating nugget up from?



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I'm a smart girl... ;-)
and I know how to Google
plus I read it in one of the interviews he did a while back...and unfortunately I can't remember exactly which one.

AND if you look at the inscription in the TEA, it's dedicated to his father, John Standish Fforde...and I don't think there are too many of those floating around...Google it and see what I mean!

Actually, I think Jasper was born before 1966, so that blows the whole name thing out of the water, unless he was born between 1962 and 1966...cuz that's when the other Jasper was in office!

<edit---according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) Jasper was born around 1962...HMMMM! LOL>



Post Edited (05-15-03 17:29)

I hope we will get Euros... The pound is getting weaker and it's not so @#$%& to go abroad as it used to be (look at me talking like an old lady)

I have no problem with Euros, except for all the tourists clogging up Piccadily as they try to grab a photo.



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I am against the potential switch to Euros, for several reasons.
My main reason for holding this view is that the right to issue a distinct currency of one's own is a key element of national sovreignty: Giving this up would be a major step towards Britain's absorption into a "United States of Europe" which is a possibility that I would REALLY HATE!!!... This view isn't just due to deep-rooted patriotism, either, although that is one of the factors involved: The shared "political cultures" & common traditions of most of the other countries that would be involved differ in many ways from the British traditions, and as we'd be outvoted it would almost certainly be our ways (to which I am accustomed, and which I consider generally superior in most ways [at least in a Bristish context] to their continental alternatives) that lost out. The general standards of "honesty" & "openness" in the politics of several of those nations (such as, for example: France, Italy, Belgium, Greece...) make the various "sleaze" scandals that have dogged British politics over the last fifteen years or so look relatively minor! Did you know that it's been several (more than four, although I forget by how many...) years since the European Commission last managed to get a set of its annual accounts accepted as adequate by the auditors? If they were a company doing business under British law then they'd have been closed down by the law-courts several years ago...
As the European legislation now stands it would be an irrevocable decision: No matter how badly the Euro system went wrong, there'd be no legal way of changing back from the Euro to a national currency. This not only seems a bad idea to me on practical grounds but is against the British tradition of legislation, which holds that the elected government should always be able to repeal any of its predeccessors' laws.
There's also (at a more pragmatic level) the important fact that accepting the Euro automatically means accepting the European Central Bank's right to set interest rates at a single, standardised level which applies right across the "Eurozone", and the high probability that this level would be inappropriate to current consitions in Britain for most of the time. Several of the countries that have already signed up for the Euro have already had problems because of this factor (Ireland in the early days, Germany now, for example...), and the underlying differences between Britain's economic system and the continental ones make problems seem even more likely in our case...
If the level of the pound currently makes holidays abroad more expensive, so what? Presumably the situation will shift again, sooner or later... The number of pounds that are spent WITHIN Britain must be many times the number that are changed into foreign currencies for use in holidays abroad, so isn't that a rather petty reason for wanting the change.



Post Edited (05-15-03 19:50)

Simon, I'm with you 100% on this.

The argument over the Euro is all bollocks anyway. The dollar is king, interest rates are a crude and ineffective way of managing the economy, and to claim the British system is less corrupt neatly ignores the current revelations about our security services funding terrorists in the UK.

Could we possibly keep politics off the fforum? I come here to escape these arguments.



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

tell us how you really feel, Simon <wink>

good points though. I think most Americans really have little or no opinion about the whole thing. But I can understand how it could be upsetting.

I can just imagine what we would think if we all the sudden went to the "North American", a combo of Canadian, US and Mexican currency. Not only would it devalue the US dollar, they'd wanna use bright colors, and that's just not cool :) (It's bad enough they're getting ready to print $20 bills with peach and copper ink included. At least it's subtle at this point! Nothing against other countries' currencies being colorful, it just doesn't seem right for ours to be! I think colorful money is quite nice, just doesn't belong here!)

How can you cope with banknotes all the same colour? I struggle enough after a couple of pints over here...



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I agree with Ben. (Gasps of amazement all round). No politics or religion on the fforum, please. Remember we are guests in Mr. Fforde's space, and it behoves us to act civilised while we're here. These topics rarely lead to civilised debate.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

OK, fair enough, I'll stay off of the subject for as long as everybody else does so..

************************************************************

"Warning! Product may contain Salamanders!"

Cheers, the fact that we've stayed off politics and religion (excepting the GSD) is probably what's kept us from outbreaks of flaming, which is of course one of the wonderful things about the fforum (as well as the amount of high wit and low humour).

Staying off politics also prevents me from banging on about it too - I struggle to avoid leaping in with a load of opinions, and it'd rapidly get boring for all concerned.



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I agree that we should try not to talk politics much here.

I disagree, however, with the notion that colorful money is bad. I know visitors to the US get the money confused, because it's all the same size and color. Living near the Canadian border, I've seen quite a bit of colorful "foreign" currency, and it's much prettier than ours. I particularly liked the Canadian 2 dollar bills, which had a picture of a robin on them. Don't see them anymore, because the one and two dollar bills have been replaced by coins. The $1 is a goldish coin with a loon on one side (and the queen on the other) and they're called 'loonies'. Naturally when the two dollar coin (silver with a goldish center) came out, they were called two-nees. BTW, the 2 dollar coins have the queen on one side, and a picture of a bear on the other. So naturally they get described as "Queen Elizabeth with a bear behind" (say it out loud).

The US has tried to swich to $1 coins instead of bills twice in the last 20 years or so (because they last longer, and don't have to keep being reprinted), but has failed on both occassions, because people preferred the bills. Canada has succeded because they took the bills out of circulation as quickly as they could after introducing the coins, so people didn't have a choice. Also, the first attempt, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, was the same color and size as a quarter.

The downside of larger denomination coins is that they get lost more easily than bills. A friend from Toronto tells me he can easily loose $20 in the couch.



--------------
&quot;I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around.&quot;
--Ross Smith

I apologize for mentioning such a touchy subject. I just meant to wonder what Jasper's dad would think...more as a way of introducing a bit of trivia to the Fforum

my humble apologies!

To Magda - but it's great to empty your change in a jar and in a week have enough to cover a whole grocery bill! (or go out drinking).

I'll also shut up now, I normally don't mention politics or religion...

(but since i'm a saver and not a borrower I'd love interest rates to go up)

*SHUT UP CARLA!!!!* *Ok now...*

*leaves the room*

Jasper explained about his dad in the erly days when we first found out about Katie and I asked who this other Fforde was on ebay.

They are a well auctioned family :-)



---
Sylvester says.... *plock*




actually he says peep, cheep, chirrup, squalk,muttermuttergrumblegrumble, oh and now he falls off his pirch whish is followed by a sheepish peek round to see if anyone was looking and a quick scramble back up

Is this subject closed? Good. Bye!

Hehe... lol.



--------------

There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.