Basil Jet wrote:

A while back a Scottish MP brought a Private Members' Bill that
sought to make it a requirement for all retailers throughout the UK who
accept English notes to accept Scottish notes on the same basis
(carefully
structured to avoid the issue of legal tender);

If the Scots would just start using English money, wouldn't that remove
any problem for the Scots without legislation? It seems like his aim is
not to solve problems for the Scots but to force English people to accept
as money portraits of people famous for nothing but killing the English.
The English, of course, would never stoop to putting pictures of someone
famous for killing Scots on our money.

The Scots do use English money though - certainly in Edinburgh I've often
had English fivers in my change and never had a problem with any English
note offered.

I presume you mean the Scottish banks dropping their issuing of notes but
this is a different matter and it's not the Scottish banks who have the
problems (apart from the inconvenience of people in mainly border branches
queueing up to "change" their money into English notes). Whenever I've used
a cash machine in Scotland or Northern Ireland I have never been offered a
choice of banknotes; nor for that matter have I been given one for my change
in shops. People find that when they leave Scotland or Northern Ireland the
only cash notes they have are Scottish or Northern Irish notes because that
is all they can obtain; they then arrive in England and either:

* get into arguments when purchasing small amounts, usually things like
refreshments and food on the final stage of the journey home or after
arriving, or petrol when driving down or getting taxies to their door
* have to go through the hassle of paying their Scottish or Northern Irish
notes into the bank (not helped by most banks having inconvenient opening
hours and machines that either aren't accessible out of hours and/or won't
recognise the notes) only to take out the same amount in English notes.

Not everybody has branches of their bank conveniently close and open at
accessible times - my nearest branch doesn't open Saturdays and has no out
of hours deposit service beyond dropping an envelope into the letterbox. The
next nearest branch frequently locks its lobby & letterbox, and has machines
that won't recognise the notes. My workplace doesn't have a branch of my
bank in the immediate vicinity; whilst I could get a bus down to the nearest
one to pay in, I'm not confident I could get there, get through the
cashier's till and then get back within the half hour I get for lunch (which
sometimes has to be broken up simply because of fixed timings).

Working on university campuses I've often seen particular problems caused by
conferences in both directions as many attendees are postgraduate
researchers on particularly tight budgets or cashflow shortfalls who can't
keep taking cash out of their accounts if they're not spending what they
already have, compounded by the cash machines running out (the number of
machines on QMUL's campus has plummeted in recent years and most of the
machines are now inside outlets not open all the time; at least we have some
just off the campus to go to).