Jul
7
Two sides of sterling
July 7, 2007 | 1 Comment
Back in May there was renewed talk of Scottish independence following some elections . . . most folks pretty much paid little attention, including most Scots, who know a good deal when they see one. Some though already seem comfortable with a separate Scotland. Take a look at the receipt below sent to me by a pal returning from a trip to Eurozone:
As you can see, Scottish notes get a whole 1.43 Euro cents better exchange rate than English notes. Don’t ask me why!!?
I’ve never seen this before. If anything, Scottish money tends to get pretty short shrift at the exchange rate booths that dot the airports of Europe. London taxi drivers especially like to turn their nose up at our lovely currency with its multiple distributors (Clydesdale notes in particular get the oddest looks, followed by Bank of Scotland with RBOS getting top spot in terms of acceptability).
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Whilst inter-railing circa 1986 we tried to change some Bank of Scotland currency into Deutsch marks on an overnight train to buy a couple of strudels to calm the beast within.
To our surprise the guy refused to do it because his machine wasn’t programmed with the exchange rate. We asked him to just to use pound sterling, but of course he wouldn’t because there was an infinitesimal difference between the rates (and of course he was getting off on the power trip).
It would have been an absolute disaster had I not packed a sandwich in my rucksack that very morning.