In article Steve Fitzgerald writes:
In message , Neil Williams
writes
On another note, though, I would like to see the abolition of the 1p
and 2p coins as the Dutch have done with the 1 and 2 euro-cent coins.
There is hardly a need for them these days.

Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?

The 1 and 2 cent coins are accepted but that is just about all. Moreover,
when paying in cash the total amount to pay is rounded to the nearest
multiple of 5 cent (which is allowed *), so you will never receive 1 and
2 cent coins.
--
* And the rounding occurs even when you want to pay the correct amount using
1 and 2 cent coins.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924131
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/

On 19 Jun, 11:55, "Dik T. Winter" wrote:
In article Steve Fitzgerald writes:

* In message , Neil Williams
* writes
* On another note, though, I would like to see the abolition of the 1p
* and 2p coins as the Dutch have done with the 1 and 2 euro-cent coins.
* There is hardly a need for them these days.
*
* Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?

The 1 and 2 cent coins are accepted but that is just about all. *Moreover,
when paying in cash the total amount to pay is rounded to the nearest
multiple of 5 cent (which is allowed *), so you will never receive 1 and
2 cent coins.
--
* And the rounding occurs even when you want to pay the correct amount using
1 and 2 cent coins.

When I was working at Sainsburys in 1984ish, ½(half)p coins stopped
being legal tender. Deli and meat scales were still calculating to
the ½p, but staff were told to just ignore them and round down.

But here's the odd part ...

Staff were told that we could still accept ½p coins from customers,
but only in pairs. This was strongly emphasised and always struck me
as bizarre.

Presumably Sainsburys had an arrangement whereby it could cash in all
its ½p coins by some deadline, but even if staff accepted them not in
pairs, the entire Sainsburys chain could only ever have been stuck
with one odd ½p if they ended up with an odd number overall.

MIG wrote:

Staff were told that we could still accept ½p coins from customers,
but only in pairs. This was strongly emphasised and always struck me
as bizarre.

It sounds like a customer friendly move - "We still accept your out-of-date
coins" - as well as an way of ensuring people suddenly have, for want of a
better term, credit that can only be used there.

Presumably Sainsburys had an arrangement whereby it could cash in all
its ½p coins by some deadline, but even if staff accepted them not in
pairs, the entire Sainsburys chain could only ever have been stuck
with one odd ½p if they ended up with an odd number overall.

Well when would anyone have reason to pay a sum ending in ½p? And how could
the store convert or give that back in change?

I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

On 19 Jun, 16:46, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:
MIG wrote:
Staff were told that we could still accept ½p coins from customers,
but only in pairs. *This was strongly emphasised and always struck me
as bizarre.

It sounds like a customer friendly move - "We still accept your out-of-date
coins" - as well as an way of ensuring people suddenly have, for want of a
better term, credit that can only be used there.

Yes indeed, but the emphasis on pairs implied something significant
when it was neither likely that someone could offer a single ½p nor
that it would matter much if they did.


Presumably Sainsburys had an arrangement whereby it could cash in all
its ½p coins by some deadline, but even if staff accepted them not in
pairs, the entire Sainsburys chain could only ever have been stuck
with one odd ½p if they ended up with an odd number overall.

Well when would anyone have reason to pay a sum ending in ½p? And how could
the store convert or give that back in change?

Presumably if they offered the correct price for some stilton
calculated to the nearest ½p and the staff forgot to round it down.
Maybe the pairs instruction was a way of making sure that staff had to
round down.


I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

If half the population's accounts ended in ½p that could be a bit of
extra/loss of money for the banks (about £200 000 between the UK
banks?), whichever way it was rounded, but I bet that hardly anyone
either paid or deposited amounts ending in ½p in banks for a long time
before that. Interest resulting in fractions of p would work as it
does now.

MIG wrote:

I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

If half the population's accounts ended in ½p that could be a bit of
extra/loss of money for the banks (about £200 000 between the UK
banks?), whichever way it was rounded, but I bet that hardly anyone
either paid or deposited amounts ending in ½p in banks for a long time
before that.

I'd disagree - a lot of people often put some of their loose change in when
depositing cheques, at least whilst the banks still allow such deposits. The
chances of a spare ½p ending up would have been quite strong.

"Tim Roll-Pickering" wrote in
:

I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

My recollection is that the bank current accounts didn't handle ½p amounts
ever.

Long before I had a bank account they had stopped allowing ½d balances, so
you couldn't, for example, write a cheque for £1.2s.6½d. At
decimalisation, there was an approved 'whole penny' conversion scale and
the banks used that to convert every balance on D-day to a whole number of
new pence. So you were never able to write cheques for, eg, £1.23½.

To get slightly back to topic, I don't remember any train fares costing odd
halfpennies (my monthly child season was 4s 11d which was 1/3 of the adult
rate), but I do remember when the Edinburgh buses (and trams) abolished the
last halfpenny fare by putting the child rate up from 1½d to 2d -- it would
be around 1955. I put in a correspondingly inflation-linked claim for a
pocket money increase.

After that fare increase, the maximum adult bus fare in Edinburgh was 6d,
and that was also the maximum fare that the ticket machines could print.

Peter

--
Peter Campbell Smith ~ London ~ pjcs00 (a) gmail.com

In article , (Peter
Campbell Smith) wrote:

To get slightly back to topic, I don't remember any train fares
costing odd halfpennies (my monthly child season was 4s 11d which
was 1/3 of the adult rate), but I do remember when the Edinburgh
buses (and trams) abolished the last halfpenny fare by putting the
child rate up from 1½d to 2d -- it would be around 1955. I put in
a correspondingly inflation-linked claim for a pocket money
increase.

Crikey! I was paying 1 1/2d child fares in London much later than that,
maybe 1960 even.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In uk.transport.london message ,
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:13:03, Peter Campbell Smith posted:

To get slightly back to topic, I don't remember any train fares costing odd
halfpennies (my monthly child season was 4s 11d which was 1/3 of the adult
rate),

When I was younger, I (and others) purchased a Third Class Cheap Day
Return to travel from Mottisfont to Romsey and back. at a cost of 5½d -
tuppence three-farthings each way, it would have been. But BR did not
say that, although an outbound train was conveniently imminent, there
was no return service at any reasonable hour. I still have the return
half, unused.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper = 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with "" or " " (SonOfRFC1036)

In message , at 10:55:40 on Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Dik T.
Winter remarked:
On another note, though, I would like to see the abolition of the 1p
and 2p coins as the Dutch have done with the 1 and 2 euro-cent coins.
There is hardly a need for them these days.

Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?

The 1 and 2 cent coins are accepted but that is just about all. Moreover,
when paying in cash the total amount to pay is rounded to the nearest
multiple of 5 cent (which is allowed *), so you will never receive 1 and
2 cent coins.

Half an hour ago a Dutch bureau de change gave me a 97 cents, rather
than the 96 cents they calculated they owed me. The change included one
each of 2c and 5c.

So it seems the Dutch have not abolished the 2c after all.

If they'd have wanted to round it up to a Euro (and save counting small
coins at all) that would have been fine by me.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 10:55:40 on Thu, 19 Jun 2008, Dik T.
Winter remarked:
On another note, though, I would like to see the abolition of the 1p
and 2p coins as the Dutch have done with the 1 and 2 euro-cent coins.
There is hardly a need for them these days.

Are they allowed to do that when they are valid elsewhere in the EU?

The 1 and 2 cent coins are accepted but that is just about all. Moreover,
when paying in cash the total amount to pay is rounded to the nearest
multiple of 5 cent (which is allowed *), so you will never receive 1 and
2 cent coins.

Half an hour ago a Dutch bureau de change gave me a 97 cents, rather than
the 96 cents they calculated they owed me. The change included one each of
2c and 5c.

So it seems the Dutch have not abolished the 2c after all.


Can they actually abolish it in their country, however? It's one monetary
system, which is used by 15 states.