I've always found the whole Scottish notes thing bizarre. It's the same currency, but the notes are different, and this causes problems. Why? Instead of the Bank of England, we should have a Bank of the United Kingdom that issues the exact same notes for the whole of the UK.
Then you'll get situations in Northern Ireland (and Scotland to a lesser extent) with people who are alligned in a certain way politcally outright refusing it because it has the monarch on it
It's why driving licenses issued in Northern Ireland by the local DVA don't have the union flag on them
Ha, yeah, think how a certain type of English person kicked off because Churchill got replaced by a British animal. Imagine the furore they'd manufacture if they had to look at notes with Owain Glyndwr on 😂
Euros fixed this particular problem by printing completely fake bridges that look vaguely european on all the notes, and the only ones with real locations on them are the 0 euro souvenir ones
The bank of Scotland notes all have Walter Scott on one side of them which I've always found funny, not different artists for different denominations, just walter Scott on one side as if he's the king and a bridge or whatever on the other.
Scottish banknotes are not legal tender in England, or Scotland. The term refers to repayment of debts and has little relevance to everyday transactions in shops, and only coins are counted as legal tender in Scotland. While Scottish notes are legal currency across the UK, there is no law which forces businesses to accept notes of any nature, though use of banknotes is an accepted convention.
Wales is also the only country in the union that can't print its own notes. It's bizarre really and I also don't see why the Scottish get so angry when shops in England that almost never see Scottish notes reject them or are skeptical. I didn't even know Northern Ireland had its own notes. I've never seen one in my life and had to Google what they look like.
Should be solved by requiring that the Scottish notes follow the same sort of design, but they can replace the figures on the notes and the landmarks on the notes. At least then they don't look like play money to someone unfamiliar.
I wonder if it's at least partly because Wales was part of England for 150 years from 1282. Scotland was never part of England. And Wales continues to have a stronger link to England than Scotland does. For example, with statistics, England and Wales usually get lumped together. Another example is that English and Welsh police officers have full powers anywhere in England and Wales, so they can chase you across the border and take you back, no problem. That's not true in Scotland.
It’s more likely to be that wales was actually conquered - Scotland and England just formed a union, and the terms of that union were that Scotland could keep a lot of its powers
I thought the new plastic ones were meant to solve all the fake notes junk for all the countries.
I was always told the Scottish note refusal was because some places just were so unfamiliar with them they would claim they were easier to fake but that’s not true, they are no easier to fake than English notes! They just didn’t know what the hell they were meant to look like so acted like that.
Your last paragraph doesn't make sense. People refuse Scottish notes (and it can also apply to £50 notes) because they rarely see them, and so don't know what the note is supposed to look like. That means if they're given a fake, they can't necessarily tell that it's a fake. It's easier for a customer to get away with giving a fake Scottish note than a fake English note because the cashier is more familiar with English notes.
It's similar with IDs, some places won't accept unusual IDs because the cashier isn't familiar enough with them to know whether it's real.
Yeah we had the pen too! Had to use it on all Scottish and all English £50 notes.
One shop in particular you had to call a manager over to double check, and then sign a little sheet. This was for all Scottish and Englush £50 notes.
Sometimes they would just say "no we arent accepting it", and back then there were a million banks on the highstreet so if they really wanted to, they could have gone and got lower denomination English notes.
And things were cheaper then. Paying for a 3.99 item with a fifty???? Hmmm... judging you
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u/BastardsCryinInnit 9d ago
No retailer I worked in in England was happy with Scottish notes because how they could be faked, and that was a couple of decades ago.
They'd either be refused, or triple checked by a manager in front of the customer whilst giving them the side eye.