I made it through to Edinburgh last week to catch Bill Bailey on his Steampunk show at the Fringe
Although I've been a fan of Bill for some time, this is the first of his shows I've seen live. He does have a habit of mumbling a bit, but for me that makes up an essential part of the show.
He managed to spend a fair bit of time ranting about Jennifer Aniston, hobbits, the evil legions of our world; Bush, Blair, bin Laden, pot plants and a Kraftwerk-cockney-flavoured version of the Hokey Cokey. Splendid.
Also, I saw in the Metro that someone was quoted as saying "You don't need to see my identification - these are not the tickets you are looking for" as they headed into the One Man Star Wars Show at the Underbelly Cow Barn.
Staying in Festival mode, actress Charlize Theron has joked that she's moving to Scotland. She's over here doing something Festival related and has acquired a taste for single malt. I'd like to be first on record stating that 1) yes, she should move to Scotland, and 2) she can move in with me any time :)
Moving away from the Festival, I was having a discussion about bank notes late last week. In particular, the topic of "being legal tender".
It's a funny topic here in the UK. The discussion came about because on the odd occasion you still get businesses in England that refuse to accept Scottish bank notes. There have been occurances of English notes being refused in Scotland but it's mainly "down south" where the fun occurs.
So what's the story with all this bank note nonsense? Well, it's a complicated one.
All Scottish banks are entitled to produce their own notes, of which three do. The Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the Clydesdale Bank.
However, these bank notes are not legal tender. Not even here in Scotland.
Interestingly, only Bank of England notes under the value of £5 are legal tender in Scotland, but seeing as how the Bank of England no longer produce a £1 note (in fact, it's only the Royal Bank that produce them now - cheers Neil) only coins are legal tender in Scotland.
But wait ...
There is actually a legal limit on the value of coins that can be used. For example, I believe it's a maximum of £10 in 50p that can be used at any one time, whereas there is no limit on the £1 or £2 coins.
Oh, and just for completion, Bank of England notes are legal tender in England, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Bank of Ireland notes, just like the Scottish varieties, are not legal tender anywhere.
To make things more interesting, Cheques, Credit Cards and Debit Cards aren't legal tender either.
However, just because something isn't legal tender doesn't mean it's illegal to use it.
So, those establishments that refuse to accept Scottish notes (or indeed English or Irish notes) are simply cutting off their nose to spite their face as it's widely recognised (by the banks, most businesses, the courts, etc) that they are obliged to accept anything commonly accepted as money.
Oh, and the Bank of England was formed by a Scotsman.
And finally (thank God I hear you say), a loan shark was jailed last week... what's so interesting about this? Well this particular Glasgow based loan shark was sharking 11,000,000 percent interest a year.
