wilbyhillbilly, which browser are you using, and which version (look at "Help->Info" or "Help->About")? Have we understood correctly that you are talking about web (HTML) pages? Is that letter an  (Â)? Does anything change when you select another encoding (codepage) for the current page? Are you sure UTF-8 is selectable and unsuccessful nevertheless?

It seems that your browser does not display UTF-8 at all or does not recognize it correctly. The pound sign £ = £ is mapped by UTF-8 to the two bytes C2A3. If your codepage coincides with Unicode there, you will see £ = £. This is a funny conincidence which also applies to some characters including ¢, ¥, §, ©, and ®.

It may be a good idea to update your browser.