<story><title>New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56503741</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>carmen_sandiego</author><text>Cool design + polymer, but they should probably just abolish the £50 already.  Very few places accept them.  Never mind the £100 notes you can get in some parts of the UK.  I would say they should encourage better acceptance of these denominations, but cash seems to be dying in general.&lt;p&gt;I look to Switzerland with envy, where as far as I can tell you can stroll into the supermarket and drop a 1000-franc note without issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dblooman</author><text>&amp;gt;Very few places accept them&lt;p&gt;I have heard this since I was a kid, in reality, it isn&amp;#x27;t true, at least not in London. I have never been refused when presenting a £50, not that I have carried them more than a dozen times.  Most places that have issues taking them are small merchants who give away too many notes breaking them, so will often ask for a smaller note.  When I was in New York once, I went into a CVS and bought $60 of sweets to bring home, the cashier shouted &amp;#x27;bill check&amp;#x27; when i presented a $100 bill, so I guess I look more dodgey in the US.</text></comment>
<story><title>New Alan Turing £50 note design is revealed</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56503741</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>carmen_sandiego</author><text>Cool design + polymer, but they should probably just abolish the £50 already.  Very few places accept them.  Never mind the £100 notes you can get in some parts of the UK.  I would say they should encourage better acceptance of these denominations, but cash seems to be dying in general.&lt;p&gt;I look to Switzerland with envy, where as far as I can tell you can stroll into the supermarket and drop a 1000-franc note without issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dan-robertson</author><text>The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think, although I don’t know how true that was. So the solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down. Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created. But:&lt;p&gt;- I don’t really think the problem is forgery. I think it’s that it is annoying for a lot of shops to make change for £50.&lt;p&gt;- I don’t think the government is particularly interested in making cash more convenient for people (card transactions are easier to track) and wealthy people mostly aren’t interested in carrying around high-value notes as credit cards exist.</text></comment>