This is a bottle of 80 shilling beer, and if you're sat at home thinking that's a really odd name for a beer style – you're not alone. Today we'll be looking at the shilling system of Scottish beer and why that name exists today. But before we dive into that, we first need to talk about old money. The 15th of February 2021 marks fifty years since the UK and many commonwealth realms abandoned the old system of shillings and half crowns in favour of a completely decimal monetary system. So I've been wondering – can a 90's kid still make sense of the old system? In this video we'll take a look at the old coins Britain used to have in their pocket, what they changed over to on decimal day itself and also look at the shilling system of Scottish beer that still exists to this day. If you're British or just a big fan of costume drama (or Terry Pratchett) you may have heard folks of the older generation talking about… okay, complaining about how the old monetary system in the UK was easier to use. It seems strange to think that our money used to be so radically different from the system of pounds and pence we use today, but back before 1971 money was a lot more weird. Let's kick off by meeting the coins of the old system. Going from smallest to largest in value we have the Farthing, ha'penny, penny, thruppence,sixpence, shilling,florin and half crown. Pence in the old currency was denoted with a 'd' for denarius, which is something borrowed from the Roman currency system. A shilling was commonly denoted with a slash, or sometimes with an 's', coming from the Roman Solidus. So how much were the coins worth? The haypenny, penny, thruppence and sixpence are all pretty obvious. A farthing was worth one quarter of a penny (no, seriously). A shilling was worth twelve pence, a florin was worth two shillings or 24 pence and a half crown was worth two shillings and sixpence. I should quickly stress as well these were the commonly available coins of the time, there have been bizarre ones like third farthings in Malta worth one twelfth of a penny and even uncommon coins in the UK such as the Groat, a four penny coin, or the Double Sovereign worth two pounds, or forty shillings. To go through all the less common coins would take all day but do let me know down in the comments if you remember any more unusual old coins I've left out. The modern day equivalent of the shilling is the five pence coin – there are twenty of both to the pound. If you wanted to go to the shops and buy a Freddo you'd say 25 pence – he says hoping the price doesn't go up before this video comes out. In the old system you'd say 5 shillings instead. Shillings were mainly there so you didn't have to carry a ludicrous amount of pennies around with you. The half crown works on much the same principle. It's sort of like the £2 coin now. You could just pay with two £1 coins, or just pay with a single coin instead. It was mainly about convenience. By 1971 after multiple abortive starts the game was finally up for the old shillings and pence system. There was a massive media campaign to try and educate people about how to use their new money such as the ITV short drama 'Granny Gets The Point' which was seemingly repeated an obnoxious number of times, and prices being displayed in both the old and new money for some time after the change. You could even see contraptions such as “Decimal Adders” and other converters available to help the public acclimatise to the change. Banks received stocks of the new coins in advance, which were issued to retailers shortly before Decimal Day to enable them to give change immediately after the changeover. Banks were closed from 3:30 pm on Wednesday 10 February 1971 to 10:00 am on Monday 15 February to enable all outstanding cheques and credits in the clearing system to be processed and customers' account balances to be converted from £sd to decimal. In many banks, the conversion was done manually, as few bank branches were then computerised. February had been chosen for Decimal Day because it was the quietest time of the year for the banks, shops and transport organisations. On the 15th February the new coins Britain had in their pocket were the 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p and 50 pence coins. The pound coin wouldn't be introduced until 1983, replacing the £1 note, and little remembered today – prior to 1984 we even had a pre-decimal halfpenny. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtqytFIyVquuH4YwgjWfsTg/join Help support the channel! - https://www.patreon.com/johndrinks #decimalday #oldmoney #shilling Links: Facebook: https://bit.ly/2zLdnQz Twitter: https://twitter.com/MxMannion Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_drinks/?hl=en

• published: 13 Feb 2021
• views: 361