To not understand why English businesses won't accept Northern Irish banknotes

[bunsaremybesties]

I am from Northern Ireland, legally a part of the UK that uses sterling. I am currently on holiday in England. In a shop yesterday there were signs displayed saying "we cannot accept Scottish or Irish notes".

My problems with this are:
(a) the use of the phrase Irish notes - personally I don't really have a strong preference for calling myself either British or Irish, but to my ears, "Irish notes", due to the current real-life currencies used on the island of Ireland, would be euro notes, used in the Republic of Ireland. So of course a shop in England would not accept these, just as it would not accept American notes or Mexican notes. I would have thought Northern Irish notes would have been a more accurate description, as Northern Ireland uses the same currency as England.

(b) what is the reasoning for not accepting "Irish"/Northern Irish banknotes, when they're exactly the same currency as those used in England, Wales and Scotland? While in Northern Ireland we do print our own banknotes, we also regularly use and accept banknotes issued in other regions of the UK. I work in a shop and within any hour block at work, I deal with any number of notes from customers that were issued by the Bank of England, Clydesdale Bank, Bank of Scotland etc. The notes have exactly the same value as those issued by Northern Irish banks like Ulster Bank or Danske Bank, so why on earth wouldn't we accept them? It's not even a consideration in our minds to refuse them. Why is it different in England?

(c) if the justification is that Northern Irish notes are not "legal tender" in England, well then everyone who lives in Northern Ireland is in trouble because in Scotland and Northern Ireland no notes, not even ones issued in those countries, are "legal tender". They are, however, legal currency and so are perfectly acceptable to be used for trade.

Can anyone explain please?

It's based largely on social similarities, cultural similarities and the bonds of blood aka ancestry.

That explains why I feel strongly connected to France, Spain and Italy, and absolutely not at all interested in northern Ireland or the Isle of man, then.

Has nothing to do with the currency question, though.

40 percent of the population of London were born outside the UK.

I'm in the other 60 percent - born here, but have absolutely no ancestry from the UK. Proven by dna testing.

My husband is from Wales and has done his dna tests. He has heritage only from Wales, and only from one part of Wales.

It's a fiction to pretend that people from Somerset are connected to people from Northern Ireland in anything other than a mythical nationalistic way.

You're very selective in picking London, but not the UK as a whole.

As for Somerset, funny you should mention that as my paternal ancestry is actually from there! 🤦‍♂️

It's not actually a fiction. I also have fourth cousins who are English, but part of their ancestry comes from mine based in Northern Ireland itself.

A lot of people in Wales and south-west England have heritage with the Republic of Ireland.

A lot of people in western Scotland and northern England have heritage with Northern Ireland. This is historical fact. Look at Belfast and see Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool, for example. A lot of people from these cities went to work in the Belfast shipyards, for example. They brought with them their culture which survives in Belfast to this day.

The sea was NOT historically viewed as a barrier between peoples, but as a water highway as it was easier to travel over that than by land.

It would be very unusual for someone like your husband to have heritage only within Wales. Especially given the waves and waves of migration of the people between the islands and mainland Europe.

But most people in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales have ancestry from other parts of the UK.

Hell, 1.6 million people in GB have the DNA of Niall Of The Nine Hostages, an Irish king in the 5th Century who wanted to establish a kingdom in GB and part of northern France.

It's a fiction to pretend that people from Somerset are connected to people from Northern Ireland in anything other than a mythical nationalistic way
I would assume someone from Somerset, if of a similar age to me, grew up speaking English, watching TOTP and Grange Hill, eating marathon bars, wanting a ZX Spectrum and cheering on the U.K. in the Eurovision. I would be surprised if a child born on the same day as me in Finland or Austria had so many connections.

Precisely!

There is a strong cultural misunderstanding and similarity between us in Northern Ireland and our relatives in Somerset.

That can be said of the whole of the UK. It even extends to Irish people from the Republic of Ireland since they're unique in all of Europe in having special status in the UK.

The cultural and ancestral similarities are too strong between us all to deny it.

Nobody from northern France has special status in the UK. That's why it rankled across the UK from the PM down to the people when Macron tried to shit stir by saying Northern Ireland isn't part of the UK. Macron was hypocritical too as France owns territory no joined to mainland France, e.g. Corsica.

Clearly, it's not unreasonable to expect the UK banknotes to be accepted in all parts.

Because that, or using a card, would make too much sense 🫤

2) not far away at all and much closer as well as cheaper to visit than European mainland is.

Last summer it was cheaper to get the Eurostar and a hotel for 2 nights in Brussels then to rent an Airbnb in the UK

That's just you and you're statistically irrelevant to the point.

The fact is that French people do not regard British people as French or part of France. Ditto Spain and Italy.

The social similarities, cultural similarities and the bonds of blood aka ancestry have created not just the British State but also the British currency known as Sterling.

And Sterling is sterling wherever you go in the UK. So, is accepted as legal currency.

So, no, it is not irrelevant to the issue of currency which is why people feel strongly about the notes being rejected/accepted.

It's no different from businesses refusing to take cash. But with non-BoE notes it's because the average business doesn't see enough of them to judge whether they are counterfeit or not. I worked in a bookshop in the south of England and we didn't accept Scottish notes. Perhaps in Carlisle or Berwick-on-Tweed they would.

I think the banknote thing is unrelated to the rest of it. It's a straightforward legal question of where currency is or is not accepted. I understand the UK as a legal and economic entity.

I don't have any ancestral / 'blood' connections to the UK at all. No genetic ties at all.

Culturally, yes, I have some of the general British things (Grange Hill, ZX Spectrum, The Young Ones etc.) but I also have strong cultural links with other places in Europe which I don't share with people in other parts of the UK.

Where I live, in North London, a lot of people are cheering on countries other than the UK in Eurovision (or the World Cup). Nationalism isn't as simple as you suggest.

I don't think my husband is that unusual in having heritage from one small part of the UK. i am on the 23andme subreddit forum, and a lot of people have surprisingly 'narrow' genetic backgrounds. I thnk he was hoping for something exotic, but it turns out that he is literally 100 percent Welsh. I can post our screenshots if you're interested!

most people in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales have ancestry from other parts of the UK.

I'd have to look into this more before discussing it further, but I'm not at all sure that this is true.

You're very selective in picking London, but not the UK as a whole.

I deliberately specified London because it is where I am from, and it's also the home to a large proportion of the UK population - and a large proportion of people who either weren't born in the UK themselves, or don't have ancestors from the UK.

London's diverse cultures encompass over 300 languages.[24] The mid-2018 population of Greater London of about 9 million[25] made it Europe's third-most populous city,[26] accounting for 13.4% of the population of the United Kingdom[27] and over 16% of the population of England.

London is not an insignificant part of the UK. It has approximately three times as many people as the whole of Wales, and roughly double the population of Scotland. And London's population is overwhelmingly not 'British' by heritage. I would struggle to think of a single child in either of my children's schools whose ancestors were in the UK a thousand years ago.

Nope , I can quite see why prioritising holidays abroad is a thing , I miss the sunshine lol

The fact is that French people do not regard British people as French or part of France. Ditto Spain and Italy.

none of those countries have unproblematic borders. Italy was only unified, tenuously and with much controversy, in the 19th century.

Parisians have very little in common with the people of Provence or Marseilles.

Spain has a large number of regions which want to secede and consider themselves autonomous, not Spanish. To the extent that they bomb people who disagree, or lock up their leaders.

there are historical and cultural links running down the Atlantic celtic corridor (western Scotland, Wales, Ireland, galicia, portugal) that have very little to do with the nation-states they're currently incorporated into.

nationality and cultural history really isn't as simple as you're making it out to be.

😁
No argument there.

I really can't feel that it's 'sad' that I haven't been to the Isle of Man. I mean I've never been to South-East Asia and that feels a lot more like something I want to do before I die.

Maybe it's being Jewish. We just can't really buy into the whole nationalism thing because we know that every nation will decide that we're not 'really' part of it when they need a political scapegoat.

(See: England 1120. Spain 1492. Russia 1800>>>. Germany 1930. Etc)

But it's not a case of 'Scotland' or 'England' accepting or not accepting banknotes, is it?

Scottish and N Irish banknotes are sometimes refused outside of those nations because retail staff are not familiar with them. Whereas, due to the population of England being so much bigger than that of Scotland and Northern Ireland combined, most people throughout the United Kingdom will be familiar with English notes and happy to accept them. It's not an official decision being taken by 'England' or 'Scotland'.

I'm with DownNative. It's definitely true that the links between the island of Ireland are stronger with Scotland and NW England than SE England, and it's also true that London has had lots of European immigration in the last twenty or so years, which creates links there however, there's definitely clear water between the archipelago and the continent. I'd have thought that the average Londoner's ancestors would have been from Britain, Ireland, or nowhere near Europe at all.

My employer (public transport) used to accept Euros, Dollars and Yen. Only notes, and change had to be given in sterling of course. I'm pretty sure that a shop keeper can accept or refuse any form of payment they like, some refuse cards, some refuse £50 notes etc. If a shop decided to only accept Zimbabwe dollars as payment, it might not be good business but surely there's no law against it - it's only where a debt already exists that you are obliged to accept sterling if offered.

I've been to fourteen other European countries. I've been to Scotland and the Isle of Man. I haven't yet been to NI. While I've handled Ulster Bank notes in a previous job (hotel at a major UK theme park, you could tell which parts of the UK were on half term that week by what notes you were being handed), I doubt that I'll ever spend one myself - after all, when I finally get around to visiting NI I'll probably be using contactless everywhere.

Come to think of it, after my most recent European holiday I got a bank card that you can pre-load with foreign currency so I'll be using far less cash on the continent than I used to too.

Getting back to the currency subject...after almost 3 decades working as a cashier in a bank and dealing with all the notes businesses had taken from customers of other sterling nations (to sort and return to the respective nation in the next bullion run because that's what has to get done) I found myself as an employee in a shop being offered a note issued by that well known British institution Danske Bank, I said oops sorry we don't take these...boy did I feel silly after all those years of not recognising it as a Sterling note at first sight. On closer inspection I decided it was probably OK to take but I chastised myself for not reading the memo that would have definitely been placed on my desk by my previous employer.
I had also fallen into the trap of giving some paper bank of England notes that my late father had squirreld away that turned out to be the previously recalled version, they were not accepted in the petrol station despite me giving them as petrol money...how weird is that? I hadn't got a later paper one to compare it to because all the 20s I had used recently were plastic... hardly any to be honest because I don't use cash myself.
Carry on arguing about dna though ;)

Danske - doesn't exactly sound like a British bank though does it?

Bank of Ireland - Again doesn't sound like a British bank.

No.

Danske Bank took over Northern Bank about 20 years ago.

Both Danske Bank and Bank Of Ireland notes are in Sterling which is your clue. IRCC, Bank Of Ireland was the main bank during the years of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. To all intents and purposes, it IS a British Bank.

There is no mutual exclusivity in Britishness and Irishness which is why ROI citizens are treated as de facto part of the British family in the UK. They aren't regarded as foreigners at all.

Exceptions can always be found and these would tend to be tourist type businesses. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of these around London accepting some foreign currencies. I know in Belfast Titanic centre will take Euros in addition to Sterling due to the cross border and EU tourists.

But these are obviously not the norm anywhere in the UK since they're not legal currency.

However, we're told that "Channel Island sterling is not accepted in the UK" because Westminster has not authorised it as legal currency. This seems unfair, yes?

However, we're told that "Channel Island sterling is not accepted in the UK" because Westminster has not authorised it as legal currency. This seems unfair, yes?

In practice though, what's to stop a shop keeper choosing to accept them? Maybe the ferry terminals in Poole or Portsmouth allow you to spend them there.

There was a "Bristol Pound" in circulation (available from a number of ATMs) that as well as participating retailers could be used when paying council tax. It got killed off when covid struck and people stopped using cash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_pound

The banking systems are different though (same as taxes) A bank note is a cheque written by the bank who wrote it..I promise to pay the bearer etc. Providing the note is good and proper and still valid (we all know banks recall them from time to time) Sterling means the note is in the same currency so there is no conversion rate although I do recall a antique dealing friend of mine telling me a few decades ago that you could buy Scottish notes a little cheaper because they were less easy to spend (so therefore hide). The facts remain

How is it "bigoted" to not accept cash from banks I am totally unfamiliar with? I wouldn't accept special edition £5 coins made by the Bank of England either because I would not be sure they are legitimate, even if they are legal tender. Scottish and NI money is relatively speaking "weird" and unusual to see. Unless you're going to wait while I Google every unusual form of currency I am offered, I ain't taking it.