Doing away with copper coins

They have changed their minds. They are keeping them.
You can still keep your jars full - or give them to charity.

Oh good!

Well, the jars go to charity when they are full, if they are full you can't keep adding more

and the thing is, prices are never rounded down - always up.

They changed their minds within 24 hours, probably because Hammond couldn't take the laughter any more.

The 5p coin is annoying though.

It would seem that many of us put them into various boxes because we can't be bothered with them. I suspect they cost more to make than they are worth. I have recently been converted to contactless payment, hardly ever use cash, only at the pub.

I have a plant stall outside my front gate to raise money for the local hospice. Several friends bring me fruit, vegetables, flowers, plants and books to sell. So many people just want to support the Hospice in a small way and last year we raised over £1600.
At the moment I am selling bags of snowdrop bulbs in the green - as I have thousands of them - and I have made over £30 already.
As you can imagine I have loads of change to exchange into notes. The local shops gladly take £1 and 50 pence coins but the rest I just bag up and go to the nearest large town and change several bags at once a couple of times a year. Last week a customer left us an IOU for 25 pence - we did laugh but he did come back and pay it.

If they do away with the one and two pence coins the first thing that will happen is that prices will rise. Think back to the halfpenny ("only small, bit of a nuisance") so everything got rounded up to the next 1p. Now things will be rounded up by 2p and 1p - together that's 9d. Next it will be that the 5p is too small so everything will rise by 1/-. Not a lot? Cost of living rising by stealth. So that's the Treasury sorted then.

A Stephen Hawking quote about god and black holes said that god plays dice and sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.
Made me think of 5p coins, Jalima.

On the face of it, it seems OK. But is it a small step towards getting rid of all coins and, ultimately, getting rid of cash altogether? There is certainly more and more talk of a "cashless society". I'm not sure whether that would be a good thing or not. How would it affect society?

At least you get the change due to you as per price advertised. Here in Euroland (Ireland) the one cent coin has been abolished but lots of prices end in 99c and of course there is not a cent to give us. Now the law was to mark up or down but I have yet to come across any goods with price ending with one cent.

Ending in 99p is called 'hoodwinking logic'. For some reason, £9.99 seems a lot cheaper than £10.

I can remember shops (especially drapers) pricing as 19s 11 3/4d

Anyone else remember saving ship-ha'pennies to take to Sunday School? We put them in a large papier-mâché model of a ship. I think they went to help missionaries overseas.

Like wobbly I remember selling goods in Woolworths on a Saturday (my first job), for 19/11 1/2 d they'd done away with farthings by then. I'm pleased that they've decided to keep the copper coins.