I would legalise the use of the Euro in the UK

Surely it is legal already? Tourist trap shops often used to take foreign money and now they take the Euro don't they. Some do for sure, I remembered this at the time.

At the moment, you could say that it's non-criminalised rather than legalised, but yeah, it is legal.

I could perhaps have made this bit clearer. The difference between me and the Government and the people who reckon they'll be the Government soon is that the current situation (plus a few little pushes in the right direction) would be my policy. For all our politicians, the current situation is the result of a lack of policy; it's what's happened prior to great leaders taking the plunge and either banning the Pound or banning the Euro. What's unusual about my preferred policy is not the policy itself but the fact that it is a policy. Or would be, if I were a politician.

I suppose the key phrase is "legal tender". Although, VAT man permitting, surely you could still use barter. Legally that is, because it goes on all the time anyway on the QT.

See this week's Weapons of Math Destruction comic. From what I read, the same nonsense is going on over there.

It's neither legal tender or legal currency, as far as I understand it, but it isn't illegal to accept it but the business would then be liable for any exchange rates and stuff.
As far as I'm aware it's like this:

Legal tender is currency which a person is obliged to accept as payment for goods or services. In England this is Bank Of England notes and coins but no others (AFAIK). In Scotland the only legal tender is coins.

Legal Currency is that which is allowed to be accepted in exchange for goods and services and has a value equivalent to legal tender but their is no obligation. Scottish notes are legal currency in England. English and Scottish currency is legal currency in Scotland.

If I'm right that's why you often see signs such as "We will not Accept Scottish £20 notes" in England and "We will not accept £50 notes" in Scotland. In England they have to accept it unless they can prove a forgery if it's a Bank of England note.

Jo - the problem in your plan which I think you've overlooked is the complete chaos this will cause. Waiting times in Supermarket checkout will be several hours, Post Offices will be jampacked and the bus services will be at standstill due to old biddies - already confused by current coinage - counting out change in both pounds and euros.

Well done Squander. You may be the first person to have revived a John Major idea. The 'hard euro' it was called: simply make the euro and the pound both legal tender in the UK.

It's actually a very good idea but for the association with J Major.

> the problem in your plan which I think you've overlooked is the complete chaos this will cause. Waiting times in Supermarket checkout will be several hours, Post Offices will be jampacked and the bus services will be at standstill due to old biddies - already confused by current coinage - counting out change in both pounds and euros.

Why will they need to count out change in both currencies? Why will they ever need to use both? My policy is to allow either for any transaction, not to force everyone to use both for every transaction.

A lot of places up here take both because there's no barrier between the North and the South; before the Euro, most places here took Punts, too. The effect on queues, I can assure you, is absolute zero. Supermarkets just have a little sign by the till telling you what today's exchange rate is, and you can pay in Euros if you want. It's no big deal at all.

Wasn't John Major's plan for the "hard ECU" - the ECU being the EU's fictional precursor to the euro?

Patrick, yes, of course, sorry: but same thing really.

- the problem in your plan which I think you've overlooked is the complete chaos this will cause. Waiting times in Supermarket checkout will be several hours, Post Offices will be jampacked and the bus services will be at standstill due to old biddies - already confused by current coinage - counting out change in both pounds and euros.

Not so.

20+ years ago (long before the Euro) we lived for a while in Germany, between Düsseldorf and the Dutch border town of Venlo. We regularly went shopping in Venlo. In the supermarket there, the checkout girls could talk to you in Dutch, German, English or French, and you could pay in Guilders, Deutschmarks, Pounds, Belgium Francs, French Francs or US Dollars, and whatever one you paid with, you could have change in any of these cuurencies.

Any delay all this caused was tiny. Literally no more than a few seconds--and there were no computerised tills or indeed any personal computers worth mentioning back then. It was all done the old-fashioned way.

Today, with universal cheap computers--and even more so with almost universal credit cards, the problem should not exist at all.

The consumer case for the single currency, I remember then, was not delays in supermarkets, etc., which really just did not happen, but the 3%, 4% or 5% rake-off the banks collected every time you had to change your money. And that is still a valid point.

In fact, with the use of credit cards, what currency you use is almost irrelevant--except for the bank's rake-off.