It's interesting how the discussion has avoided the other issuers of bank notes in the UK, both Scotland and Northern Ireland. At a glance practice seems mixed, but George Best deserves a shout-out.
"outpouring of criticism over Churchill being replaced by a badger"
Anyone ever hit a badger (whilst driving)? That'll bugger your car up good an' proper, and the little sod will just walk away from it.
Or, we could get a sequence of Churchill's going for the fiver - how about Mad Jack? Any damn badger would have second thoughts about getting involved with his Fiesta.
Or, Khan on the fiver, and the Shatner tenner?
Or, and I might be pushing it here, turtles on all of 'em?
I think the issue they’ve run into is there just aren’t enough denominations to divvy up the monumental allocation between the identity groups with sufficient granularity. Bears comparison with the London Overground renaming where they’ve done one for black people (windrush), one for gay people (mildmay), two for women, one for immigrant communities generally, etc etc. The whole exercise seems rather silly and transactional but I think it’s obviously what liberal institutions are comfortable with at the moment. Any attempt at unifying is suspect.
«there just aren’t enough denominations to divvy up the monumental allocation between the identity groups with sufficient granularity»
Nothing forbids the government from pandering to every identity grievance group however minor by issuing banknotes of the same denomination with different group-specific icons on at least one side.
«in a nation such as Britain’s today - multi-ethnic, multi-faith, with high levels of inward migration, growing ethnic tensions and low economic growth - an active approach to integration and cohesion is more important than ever»
But “integration and cohesion” means also an integrated and cohesive working class acting together on their common class interests and therefore the resurgence of labor unions fighting for higher wages and better public services; this would mean lower property and business incomes and higher labor costs as before Thatcher and Blair.
With Thatcher and Blair and their successors instead the working class has been redefined into ethnic, faith, sex, orientation based lobby groups competing with each other for preferential treatment rather than fighting employers for better wages for all.
So advocating for “an active approach to integration and cohesion” sounds like socialism and that would be opposed to the interests of middle class property owners and of small (and large) business owners, which are the core constituency of all (past) major parties.
«the working class has been redefined into ethnic, faith, sex, orientation based lobby groups competing with each other for preferential treatment»
Part of this has been that anti-union consultant have told employers that the core of the trade unions were white christian male straight workers not just because they were the majority but also because of their shared education and experiences and therefore to wreck the labor unions it was important to reduce their influence and boost that of competing identity groups.
As some other blogger has well remarked the thatcherite english governments from Thatcher and Blair onwards regard themselves to be the HR department of english business as a whole and have followed that strategy zealously, including what could be considered mere details like banknote symbolism.
It's interesting how the discussion has avoided the other issuers of bank notes in the UK, both Scotland and Northern Ireland. At a glance practice seems mixed, but George Best deserves a shout-out.
Or the squirrels could go on the back.
RBS banknotes...
https://www.natwestgroup.com/heritage/subjects/banknotes/current-issue-banknotes.html
"outpouring of criticism over Churchill being replaced by a badger"
Anyone ever hit a badger (whilst driving)? That'll bugger your car up good an' proper, and the little sod will just walk away from it.
Or, we could get a sequence of Churchill's going for the fiver - how about Mad Jack? Any damn badger would have second thoughts about getting involved with his Fiesta.
Or, Khan on the fiver, and the Shatner tenner?
Or, and I might be pushing it here, turtles on all of 'em?
I think the issue they’ve run into is there just aren’t enough denominations to divvy up the monumental allocation between the identity groups with sufficient granularity. Bears comparison with the London Overground renaming where they’ve done one for black people (windrush), one for gay people (mildmay), two for women, one for immigrant communities generally, etc etc. The whole exercise seems rather silly and transactional but I think it’s obviously what liberal institutions are comfortable with at the moment. Any attempt at unifying is suspect.
«there just aren’t enough denominations to divvy up the monumental allocation between the identity groups with sufficient granularity»
Nothing forbids the government from pandering to every identity grievance group however minor by issuing banknotes of the same denomination with different group-specific icons on at least one side.
«in a nation such as Britain’s today - multi-ethnic, multi-faith, with high levels of inward migration, growing ethnic tensions and low economic growth - an active approach to integration and cohesion is more important than ever»
But “integration and cohesion” means also an integrated and cohesive working class acting together on their common class interests and therefore the resurgence of labor unions fighting for higher wages and better public services; this would mean lower property and business incomes and higher labor costs as before Thatcher and Blair.
With Thatcher and Blair and their successors instead the working class has been redefined into ethnic, faith, sex, orientation based lobby groups competing with each other for preferential treatment rather than fighting employers for better wages for all.
So advocating for “an active approach to integration and cohesion” sounds like socialism and that would be opposed to the interests of middle class property owners and of small (and large) business owners, which are the core constituency of all (past) major parties.
«the working class has been redefined into ethnic, faith, sex, orientation based lobby groups competing with each other for preferential treatment»
Part of this has been that anti-union consultant have told employers that the core of the trade unions were white christian male straight workers not just because they were the majority but also because of their shared education and experiences and therefore to wreck the labor unions it was important to reduce their influence and boost that of competing identity groups.
As some other blogger has well remarked the thatcherite english governments from Thatcher and Blair onwards regard themselves to be the HR department of english business as a whole and have followed that strategy zealously, including what could be considered mere details like banknote symbolism.