Wednesday 24 July 2013

Confused?

 
Apparently Jane Austen is set to appear on a £10 note after an outcry that no bank note would have otherwise featured a woman.
Jane Austen is to become the face of the new £10 note after a public outcry that every banknote featured a man.

New Bank of England governor Mark Carney today unveiled the new design as a tribute to ‘one of the greatest writers in English literature’ which will appear from 2017.

The move comes after the Bank faced criticism that a plan for Winston Churchill to feature on the new fiver meant there would not be a woman on any English note.
Or as the BBC reports:
Author Jane Austen is to feature on the next £10 note, the Bank of England says, avoiding a long-term absence of women represented on banknotes.
Have I missed something? There was me thinking that the Queen was female. Oddly enough a similar outcry hasn't been made against the woeful lack of women on Euro notes (after all there are plenty of important women to choose from).

9 comments:

  1. This public outcry seems to have passed me by. And like you I thought there was a woman on all our banknotes. Also, is Jane Austen that important?

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    1. The public outcry has largely passed me by also...another example of the out of touch political class obsessed with a picture on the £10 note in direct contrast with the rest of the county who worry about whether they have enough of them.

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  2. As I said before I don;t think there has ever been an English bank note produced without a woman on. Before Brenda was added to the notes Britannia appeared on them all

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  3. To be fair TBC Caroline Criado-Perez, the obviously British woman who is leading this campaign, states in her petition that many will suggest that the Queen is a woman and she is already on every banknote... To which she ripostes, that the lady is there because of the circumstances of her birth, rather than what she has done.

    Her suggestions included "Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Seacole or Rosalind Franklin (who?)", but when I saw her being interviewed by Aunty last night, she was suggesting that it is only white males that ever get a look-in...

    ...Not enough lefties either, I suppose.

    Anyway, after the ubiquitous female author, what next? JK Rowling? or perhaps someone with a bit of the swarth about them...

    How about someone like Choudhury Muenuddin...?

    Or... Even though he isn't British... Nelson Mandela (always a favourite)?

    Personally, I reckon that one truly great British gentleman that appears on our banknotes would be spinning in his grave if he knew the sort of state that our financial system is in... Adam Smith!

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    1. I wonder if Caroline Criado-Perez would agree with Thatcher being on a bank note after all she was elected...

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  4. Classic navel-gazing.

    People should be more concerned with the value (QE) of their money rather than the gender of who is on them.

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  5. Elizabeth I gets my vote. A woman of ability who spoke six languages fluently and was proficient in a couple of others. She definitely made a significant contribution to British history over and above what would be expected from a mere accident of birth.

    The contrast between her and her present namesake couldn't be more stark.

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    1. Aye...would Liz the First have rubber stamped the ECA 1972...I suspect not

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