All those who keep saying 'but he sold our gold' I'm interested in why it bothers you so much, ta muchly.

Gold has been used to trade with for millenia - its intrinsic value (more than food or water for eg) is that it is desirable, a status symbol, it is valued universally so you can use it to buy stuff anywhere in the world, it doesn't devalue in times of trouble, it lasts forever, if the world ended tomorrow man would still trade with gold. Last year when the financial markets were in meltdown gold was one of the only 'currencies' that grew. Plus it is real. All of these billions that GB has wasted are notional, the huge debt that he ran up is notional (though we still owe it), there are not actually £10 million pound coins sitting in every bank vault. But gold is real.

CoteDAzur - yes Uranium would be a particularly odd choice. You could equall well use any other inert metal though - silver or platinum for instance. We just like gold because it is pretty.

If anyone knows why Gordon Brown thought it a good idea to convert gold to fiat money at that particular time, I would be interested to hear it.

re "Why gold as reserve metal?"

Aside from the rarity, gold is an inert metal. That is, it can sit in a vault for hundreds of years and it will not corrode nor decay.

Uranium, on the other hand, has a half-life of some duration I can't remember, meaning it will slowly decay over time, emitting radiation in the meanwhile for good measure.

Yes 'exchange' or uranium are rarely though to end well ;)

Sorry ooojimaflip, not a chemist, or electrical engineer so unfamiliar with all the rarer metals. The "familiarity" with precious metals is because they are also used for jewelry.

Although, for example, titanium is higher in price than some others, I don't know if it is regularly used for cosmetic purposes - it has some ideal properties but perhaps not the attraction of gold, silver, platinum, IYSWIM.

There are no doubt limited (and thus expensive) stocks of other elements, such as Uranium, etc, but we don't "trade" those in the same way, an "exchange" could be fatal!

PFI - introduced by the Conservatives, embraced by Labour.

Beachcomber, whether it was or wasn't a mistake, my point was is that it was a one-off, and in my opinion Labour/Brown have done far worse things, economically, on a consistent and continual basis. I'd rather see the focus on that than the gold decision.

NetworkGuy - there are far more important, expensive and rarer metals in electronics than gold though aren't there? Why don't we have reserves of lanthanide elements instead? Apart from the fact that China has most of them.

Not sure which government introduced PFI but those schemes are costing a shedload of money and while they mean that the initial sum doesn't have to be found, the overall costs (and contract length of 25 years for some) mean that they were poor deals overall, for a short-term saving for the government (ie not having to borrow tens of millions and pay it back over the same 20-odd years).

You'll also find gold plated contacts in all sorts of things electrical, Riven.

Think the point is that unlike currency, where a government can "print more" leading to suitcases full of cash, only useful for burning for warmth or to boil a kettle, there is always a pretty high value on precious (and these days, not so precious) metals, and keeping hold of quantities of gold is like having insurance.

GB's gold sale forced a "low" in the market and the UK was the loser for it. He won't ever want to talk about it, of course, as it was an error of judgement, and he wants only to be seen as having made "correct" decisions.

Much as I don't like Brown, I'm prepared to give him a pass on this one. It was a mistake, an expensive mistake and maybe one that's symptomatic of his behaviour. But politicians do make one-off mistakes.

I'm more concerned about the way in which Labour's spent way too much money by co-opting the private sector in a totally inappropriate way that's resulted in the companies involved being able to take the piss and in public services and infrastructure projects being WAY more expensive than they need to be. Instead of taking a "let government do what it does best and companies what they do best," Labour has mixed the two up in an unholy alliance.

Plus all the other Labour mindsets that have resulted in wasted money. These aren't one-off mistakes, they're a permanent state of mind.

TBH - you could probably do without the antibiotics and water purification as you could use your other purchases to get them.

If you want a global collapse hedge you want to be buying guns, antibiotics, water purification tablets and some more guns. Not gold.

He bought yen, euros and dollers all doing fab at the moment!

I think the views here show this is a question people have an interset ,aybe we should ask MNHQ to pass it on to GB?

Igglybuff - yes, but. Most of the historical reasons it was useful have gone (If it was THAT useful it would be being used instead of sitting in vaults anyway). What is it good for now? I don't see that our attachment to gold is any more rational that our attachment to the USD. It is only worth what it is worth because everyone agrees that it is worth what it is worth. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns and all that ;)

beach gold does retain value over the long term - yes there are short term fluctuations but over time it does (I think).

However as financial markets move on and economies grow I suspect that gold might lose its allure as a reserve?

Oooj - gold has always been highly sought after - hence gold medals, golden rule etc etc. It's not just pretty, it's properties mean it has had a wide range of uses. It's a historical fact that gold has always had value to man.
Also gold used to directly underpin currency (our banknotes talk about paying the bearer the sum of"x pounds") - prior to that gold coins were used.