Sunday 28 January 2024

New Banknotes

 
The Bank of England has released a new set of banknotes. They look exactly the same as the current ones except they have on them the face of a certain ugly big eared Annunaki overlord you might recognize. The new notes will enter circulation in a few months. The worrying aspect is that the Bank has taken the opportunity of needing to add King Charles III to introduce its new "digital pound". This is all going on at something called "The Future of Money Exhibition" which begins next month and asks questions such as: how will banking effect the environment?... beats me! Should we use low-carbon 50p pieces? The article also gloats about how cash payments have been reduced because of the Covid 19 pandemic, which was one of the objectives of that pandemic of course. However they still believe that "cash is extremely important". Really? They continue: "In 2022, 1.1 million people in the UK did not hold a bank account and depended fully on cash." Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68085850. That's good news if it's true, but how did they work out that figure? We cashies are by nature untraceable and cannot be counted. Incidentally, you don't need to have no bank account to be financially off grid; simply withdraw your cash and spend it directly as much as possible. The desire for cash, measured from after the pandemic, has increased, not decreased; and that is down to customer pressure, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/10/have-we-passed-peak-cashless.html.
 
I had a very happy experience today. I went shopping at the grocers I mentioned in this article: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/04/whose-street-my-street.html. Only one of the three human cash tills was open and it was manned by a cheerful middle-aged Spanish gentleman who always seems to be there when I visit. He talks to the customers and knows some of us by name. The queue for this checkout stretched right up one of the aisles; there were honestly about a dozen people ahead of me and it took almost half an hour to get served; but I didn't mind, in fact I was overjoyed. When it was my turn I quipped: "Look, all these people are queuing up just to see you! You're better than any auto-checkout soulless machine." As I left with my shopping I saw that the queue had got even longer; it had literally almost reached the bakers shelf on the far side of the floor. Only then did I see a second cashier reluctantly plod along to open a second till. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesco have a policy to make shopping as difficult as possible for cashies. They're trying to "encourage" us to use the auto-checkouts. Well, it didn't work! They were forced by the wishes of their customers to have two human cash tills open today. Humanity 5- Insanity 0.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/05/coronation-livestream.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2023/12/auto-checkouts-are-off.html.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"but how did they work out that figure? We cashies are by nature untraceable and cannot be counted"

Very simple, if you have a national insurance number (like any British citizen that wishes to work in this country over the age of 16). Look at the number of people who have compared with the number of current accounts by name held in banks (this has to be disclosed to avoid fraud) and then see the difference in figures.

Most commonly the elderly do not hold accounts more than younger working age folk as most people need a bank account to be paid by their employer. If you get paid 'cash in hand' and don't fill out your tax returns then you could be 'off the grid' but the HRMC tend to catch folks eventually and no matter how many years later that tends to not go so well if you can't prove your income...

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Well deepest appreciation for the information, Einstein; now you can be happy for the rest of the week!
However, we cashies are still untraceable in the sense that all our financial transactions are private. Contrary to popular belief, as well as yours, most cashies are not tax-evaders. Cash-in-hand businesses do fill out tax returns. It makes taxation harder yo calculate and enforce of a business is cash-in-hand, but I know very well it's not impossible.

Anonymous said...

Your financial transactions using a bank aren't untraceable. Every deposit and withdrawal and it's location are logged. I think you are mistaking knowing what you spend cash on being known as oppose to what cash you are using. Therein lies the difference. If there was a reason to trace what you spend the cash on every cashpoint and bank has a camera and you will be followed on cctv relatively easily these days to that local Tesco que and the time the items were scanned can be checked and your whole shopping list provided to the police if needs must. Using cash won't hide that purchase of baked beans Ben.

I also never suggested 'cashies' are all tax evaders but employees paid in cash have a responsibility to make tax returns themselves not just the employing business. This is known as the 'grey economy'

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Hi Anon, I know very well my transaction with the bank can be traced. I was referring to transactions between businessmen or transactions between shoppers and retailers. Yes, of course there is CCTV in every shop, but if it ever came to the point where this CCTV data was used to monitor what you were buying in cash, it would kind of prove my point that the govt want to monitor our every action. The only exception, both legally and ethically, would be if somehow what you pick up from a grocers to feed yourself was of massive legal importance. That's a hypothetical trolley dilemma and of no practical importance.

Anonymous said...

When they load face and gait recognition on all the cameras, maybe even voice recognition on microphones all over in the future, like in you know what book, there won't be much anonymity left.

Anyway just because people queue up for the human cashier doesn't mean they won't continue to throttle the availability of human cashiers and then remove them entirely.

By removing banks and cash machines they're throttling the cash supply and it's only a matter of time before they either start charging a fee to take cash or just refuse it. Dozens of ASDAs have just gone cashless.

Many shops have already started charging much more for some products if you don't use their loyalty card.

As long as the great majority comply they will just tighten and tighten the noose, they aren't bothered about a powerless minority complaining. In fact they probably enjoy that we are conscious of what they are doing.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

I'm well aware of what the plans are for the future of money and have covered it many times. I don't have a problem with loyalty cards; charging people less is what they are all about. I don't have any because of the way they create a database of your purchases. Despite this I don't agree with you at all about the inevitability of this future. There is an increase in cash usage during the post-Covid period. I've reported on how at least two pubs in Oxford have start accepting cash again after being cashless previously. A few days ago I witnessed a corporate grocery chain being forced to bend to the will of a large number of cash-bearing customers, or at least those who don't want to talk to a robot. That is hopeful I think.