Following complaints (including from a female Tory) about the lack of women other than HMQ portrayed on our banks notes, our new Guv of BoE is to make an announcement on the subject within a month. Assuming bank notes will not be abolished, who do you reckon with be portrayed?

My guess with Tories in power and a Canadian Guv, we may see that late Magaret Hilda Thatcher.

What do you think of that prospect?

(I can just envisage the Yorkshire folk on here cuddling up in bed at night to their life savings bundled in a wad, with Maggie's visage smiling at them!).

I think the whole thing is a storm in a teacup.

Over the centuries, women have been held back by social convention and the sheer practicality of child-rearing etc.
Whilst we are leaving those times behind at last, it is still the case that most of history was made by men, so, of the four denominations of banknote (£5, £10, £20, £50 ... any others?), if you put a woman on there, you are using up 25% of the space ... not really representative, is it?

My suggestion would be to have more than one portrait per denomination ... then we could be more representative.
Failing that, don't have people depicted at all.

While we are at it, we could lose the Queen from the notes ... we never had a monarch on them before her, so why now?

Thatcher on banknotes would push me to total debit card use.

I reckon Thatcher will be proposed and I reckon their could be a backlash that is more than a storm in a teacup. Could be fun.

When the pound coin was introduced, it was for a while nicknamed [iThe Thatcher[/i.
Small, brassy and thought it was a sovereign.

IIRC the Mint have always had "back up" figures for bank notes in case there were printing problems with the suggested ones.

It is convention for this back up figure to move onto the bank note the next time one is changed. The position is currently held I believe by Jane Austen, so she would be the next logical choice.

Are you here all week?

And this year being the 200th anniversary of the publication of [iP&P[/i ...

I think you're right, I heard something about her being next the other day.

I have to agree with El Barbudo in general though, I really don't get why it's an issue. Why would it matter if there wasn't a woman on any of the notes? Would it matter if there were no men?

Because some people get worried about such symbols.

I still just don't understand why. If anything, it suggests to me a paranoia/inferiority complex about such things that has the potential to undermine genuine issues. It's pictures on a piece of paper, why does one of them have to be a woman for the sake of one of them being a woman? If there was a campaign for an individual person whom people thought worthy I'd see much more value in it, but this backwards approach of first deciding that one must be from a particular demographic and then scrabbling around for worthy candidates within that demographic just seems weird. Put anyone on there who seems worthy, and make the case for them on the merit of their achievements. I don't think it's healthy to base the case around their gender or ethnicity or anything similarly arbitrary, as IMO that can only cheapen your point and their standing.

I've often thought that very few people seem to stop short at campaigning for equality/fair treatment, they find problems where there aren't any and end up looking for superiority/preferential treatment.

I think that all the time we have a woman on [ievery[/i bank note, it's only fair that the rest of the pictures are of men. For equality, an' all that.

Be good if they stick a topless page 3 girl with an advert for The Sun on! Two fingers to feminism!

Would you actually want to handle such notes? Just imagine whose hands they will have been pawed by ... uuurgh.

I entirely agree. Personally, I think that obsessions about such things are indicative of a lack of more serious political analysis and the desire to pick on 'easy' things.



There has been such a campaign in the last year or so – and I signed the petition for it. That was Alan Turing, as it happened.

Or to a specific variety of feminism.

There is no 'one' feminism.

Thatcher would have loved that.

I'd put Stephen Fry on one, Dally wouldn't put one in his trousers again.

Oh he would, but when no-one was looking.

I wouldn't be able to stomach a nice long line of coke if I had to see Thatchers ugly sneering mug as I rolled the note up.
Perish the thought!

You bankers are all the same!

Do people have to be dead to get on notes?
Tim Berners-Lee would have to pop up at some time, he's changed the world as we know it.

As for feminist women a great shout is Emily Pankhurst and if the Scots get independence a suggestion would be Flora MacDonald.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a campaign to put Alan Turing on a note. And he arguably made Berners-Lee's contribution possible – plus his huge contribution to the war effort.



One of the current suggestions is Mary Seacole.

The Queen is dead?
They kept that quiet, why wasn't I told?

Mind you, I've long suspected that Phil the Greek is a zombie.

In much the same way that I'd suggest that Mary Wollstonecraft paved the way for the Pankhursts.
The list is long.

I meant the other side

and not the other side as in zombie

So desperate was she to keep Charlie off the throne that she invented the QueenBot3000 before her passing.