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During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, became used to constant change, but now there is more evidence of a major alteration where Wales has a central role – the use of bank notes.
For the Bank Holiday read today, he explores this astonishing phenomenon.
When was the last time you used a note?
The figures show you were far more likely to use a card or your phone, because the use of notes has shown a MASSIVE decline, and that could have a major impact for the Royal Mint (RM) at Llantrisant.
I like to think I am good at adapting to change (I have had a lot of practice!), but sometimes it is difficult.
For example, when I started in journalism all copy was physical (as with almost all currency exchanges) and written on a typewriter.
You would have to prepare several versions, and drop one of them in the News Editor’s wire basket on his desk.
Now, of course, everything is on a computer, and the copy is sent over digitally to an online ‘basket’, where the story (after sometimes being checked) can be put into the paper or website.
But the speed of change today with how you actually pay for things, puts all of this in the shade.
In 2009 58 per cent of transactions involved physical money – today it is just nine per cent.
Around where I live in Cardiff ALL the cashpoints in banks have closed, so you have to go in a local supermarket, or pay to use a special machine.
I always object to this (I know it’s not much) because it just seems plain wrong to have to pay to get your OWN money out…
The Bank of England (BoE) does the notes, but change (obviously) can be given in coins, with the RM making those, and it declares proudly on its website that it offers: “…a breadth of experience in terms of best practice and strategy (and that its) Circulating Coin team brings to the fore a wealth of knowledge gained from years of experience”.
But for how much longer will this experience be needed?
If hardly anyone is using notes now, there will presumably be little requirement for change in coins, which will hit the RM’s ‘Circulating Coin team’.
So from writing copy on a typewriter, to using coins, it’s all (ahem) change!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when huge change happened all around him) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – disturbing news that TWO Welsh police organisations have been forced to pay huge amounts in damages over sex abuse investigation failings, when UK sex crime cases generally have more than tripled over the last two decades, shines the spotlight once again on the shortcomings overall of one of those forces (the biggest one in Wales), which was responsible for a string of miscarriages of justice, and may bolster the argument of critics who are angry that the small country of just 3.1 million people, has FOUR forces.
