Everyone is familiar with the currency of the United Kingdom, more commonly known as the pound. Are these two different things? Pound and sterling are used interchangeably in the United Kingdom, but is there really a difference between these two words used for the currency denomination? Some say that the basis of this currency dates back to the Anglo-Saxon period. During this time, sterling was minted from silver.
A pound of it consisted of sterlings. Sizeable transactions were made through the exchange of pounds of sterlings. The pound sterling is subdivided into pence. These four currencies make up the basket of currencies for the calculation of the value of the IMF Special Drawing Rights. Sterling silver is an alloy of silver containing The word sterling is believed to come from the Old Norman French esterlin meaning little star transformed in stiere in Old English strong , firm , immovable.
The abbreviation comes from librae , solidi , denarii libra was the basic Roman unit of weight; the solidus and denarius were Roman coins. The coins in circulation: 1 penny, 2 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, 1 pound, 2 pounds. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have some different coins and notes from the mainland but the monetary system is the same.
If an amount of money consists only of pence, we put the letter ' p ' after the figures. For example: 20p is often pronounced " twenty pee " rather than " twenty pence ". But with a keen eye on the Royal Mint's bottom line Henry VIII above drastically reduced the silver content of coins minted in his reign in what became known as the Great Debasement. It was left to Elizabeth I in to restore the value of the coinage, which would remain relatively stable into the 19th Century.
For centuries, coins in circulation endured the indignity of having their edges clipped off by penny pinchers harvesting the value of the precious metal before passing on the rump coin for its original value. In s, minting of coins started to become mechanised, and design features like edge lettering were introduced to help eradicate coin-clipping. Harsh penalties were still imposed on those found guilty of counterfeiting: one William Chaloner was sentenced to death after being brought to justice by the then Master of the Mint, Sir Isaac Newton above.
There have since been numerous grand attempts to manage the value of sterling, including the Gold Standard, the Bretton Woods system and the European Exchange Rate Mechanism - but prevailing western economic orthodoxy now favours floating exchange rates, and the value of the pound is largely determined by supply and demand.
The pound has also survived as an independent currency when most of the rest of Europe adopted a single currency, the euro, something that at one stage in the early 21st Century seemed the likely fate of sterling too. An alternative currency, the Scots pound, continued until the Act of Union created a currency union based on a pound's value south of the border. It retains the right to print its own banknotes, but these have been equivalent in value to their southern counterparts since unification.
Now, the SNP is keen to assure voters that the country's year-old adoption of a 1,year-old currency would not end if they vote in favour of independence in the forthcoming referendum. The British political establishment has joined forces to warn that it most certainly would - but First Minister Alex Salmond insists that Scots "know that the pound is as much theirs as it is George Osborne's".
In , the U. In , when the euro became the common currency of most European Union member nations, the U. In a June referendum, British voters, by a slim majority, supported a measure to leave the European Union altogether, initiating a process that's commonly known as Brexit.
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