It was fifty years ago today (well, yesterday)

[williamwright]

Off topic, but a bit of light relief

FIFTY YEARS AGO

Can you remember what you were doing exactly fifty years ago yesterday? (That's assuming you were born.)

On the morning of February 16th 1972 I was attempting to collect dinner money from a class of 35 assorted malcontents and troublemakers. The new coins had only appeared that morning, and a few kids had been to the shops and got them in change. Otherwise, we were using ?old money?.

As an aside, for months before D Day the government had been distributing large quantities of the ?new money? in the form of (worthless) plastic coins. These were for children and adults to practice with. Lots of these coins went into the schools, and most were stolen and taken home, in the belief that come D Day they would be legal tender.

The central problem with Dinner Money was that the price was 1/9d per day, and there was no exact decimal equivalent. Most kids paid weekly:

1/9d times five = 8/9d (eight shillings and nine pence). In New Money they now paid the nearest equivalent to 8/9d, which was 44p. But some parents couldn?t afford either 8/9d or 44p on a Monday, so they sent 9p dinner money on each day of the week when they had it to send. This meant that if they managed to send 9p every day from Monday to Friday they had sent a total of 45p. But the ?rich? kids had only paid 44p! In the Proletarian People?s Republic of South Yorkshire that was a political scandal just waiting to happen. So it was decreed, in a hastily distributed instruction from the West Riding County Council Education Dept that a separate Decimal Dinner Money register had to be kept, in which it was to be recorded which kids had paid five consecutive lots of 9p in the week. On Friday afternoon the main educational task was the distribution to these children of their one New Penny change. If a child had only bought four dinners that week there was no penny, and this was perceived as being grossly unfair. Letters soon started to come from parents, along the lines of, ?He missed the Wednesday before last but then he had Thursday and Friday dinners, then last week he had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I made sure he had the Wednesday so there was five in a row. So could you send the penny please?? and ?He was off on Tuesday for the dentist but he had all the other days so could you send the penny please? It?s not my fault his teeth are bad.? These matters had to go to arbitration. Luckily the Head had little sympathy with these claimants and never paid up.

I wonder if anyone else who was teaching at the time remembers this fiasco?

Bill

[jon]

Yes I remember this was a pre-cursor to joining the Common Market, I went to the village hall for a talk by Enoch Powell.

[Jethro_uk]

My Dad moved here in 1963. My Mum remembers him learning about Lsd and remarking "That won't last long" :)

[Davey]

Not teaching, I was a university student, but I remember that then first thing I bought with the new money was 6 faggots from our local butcher, in Quorn, Leicestershire, for me and my two housemates.

[soup]

I remember D-day (I was more a pupil than a teacher in '72,[only born in '62]). The thing I remember most wasn't the faff with 'Dinner money' (was on free meals so any monetary changes passed me by) it was more the jingle that seemed to be everywhere :- "use your old pennies in sixpenny lots" as six old pennies were equivalent to 2 1/2 pence

Aside :- I remember 5p could get me a third of a pint of milk (Thanks for making us pay for this often gawping stuff[1][2] Maggie) and a packet of Tudor crisps ( 2 1/2P ).

[1] Frozen then thawed in winter; left outside, for yonks, and curdling in the spring/autumn. [2] The Flouride mouthwash was gawping as well.

[Jethro_uk]

For a few years after my old pennies went into a model railway in the window of a local toyshop. They had a slot mounted through the glass so it could be run outside shop hours. 1d=1minute IIRC.

[Roger Hayter]

Of course, unlike later bits of shopping metrication which were bitterly contested, it could have been of no interest whatever to the Common Market what we divided our Pounds into. But I remember it being sold as a pro-European move, as I remember Powell, ever the opportunist, opposing it on the same grounds.

[alan_m]

Couldn't the refund have been to the nearest 0.5p?

[Jethro_uk]

The problem is, rightly or wrongly, almost every other country in the world uses decimal money.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Well I don't recall the details but the press and tv were full of these oddities at the time and of course everyone thought that all the shops were deliberately rounding up prices they had already adjusted beforehand to make the maximum profit. Who says conspiracy theory and fake news is something new?

Brian

[Halmyre]

Don't remember a fiasco because at our school we paid daily; there was no weekly option that I can recall - if we'd turned up on a Monday with a week's worth of dinner money it would have been forcibly removed seconds after entering the school gates. I don't remember learning with plastic coins.

I do remember the teacher urging us to bring in a 2 shilling (or 10 pence) coin so that she could give us change in the form of a 1 new pence coin.

I've just realised it's ~12 months since I handled any coins...

[jon]

....but as Enoch Powell predicted the Common Market was a smoke screen for a federal europe with a common currency.

[Dave Plowman (News]

But you couldn't give every kid a calculator if we had kept LSD?

[Dave Plowman (News]

And he was wrong about that too, as with so much else?

Thanks for reminding us so many anti EU types are arch racists.

[Jethro_uk]

It may have been a smokescreen to him. It wasn't particularly well hidden to people who were awake at the time. Like my Dad, for example.

[Jethro_uk]

I can't recall the currency change being traumatic.

But I do recall starting school and teachers being in a flap having to teach metric (our first year in school was the first year to start from scratch in metric).

Mind you, I also recall being taught the 24 hour clock over a few lessons too, and I already knew that as well as metric.

One of the disadvantages of having an Eyetie (as some teachers said) father.

[Jethro_uk]

I've more time for Enoch than I have for anyone that quotes him. Much like the Bible they're not really understanding.

[williamwright]

I can never follow your logic. You seem to jump from one concept to another as if there's causation when there isn't. It makes my head spin.

Bill

[williamwright]

Someone on high said No. I don't know why.

Bill

[Peter Able]

At that time I was a London Bus Conductor. LT were well-prepared for the event - not so the public. Plenty of arguments about the correct conversion rate with passengers. Do you remember the clock-face approach to converting?

In the long-term though, it meant less weight in my jacket pockets - but the significant diminution of a particularly sweet revenge.

When a smartarse offered a pound note in payment of a twopenny fare, note taken, £1 bag of old coinage taken out of jacket pocket, two pennies extracted, remainder poured into the smartarse's lap.

Never as good with decimal currency...;)

PA