BS: Another question for Brits

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,Bert
Date: 20 Feb 08 - 12:20 PM

Much better than the stuff from The Rose and Crown.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 19 Feb 08 - 07:00 PM

Singles (45rpm) cost 6s 8d, so you could buy 3 for a quid....

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 07:35 PM

I used to make home brew. Rather nasty, but very cheap, and pretty strong stuff. And that's not me knocking home brew in general, just my home brew.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 11:22 PM

G'day Bert & Rich B,

Probably better by proportion of the outlay!

It reminds me of an Australian (Queensland region) song of (~) the '50s called Home Brew - the chorus of which ran (presumably with the singer drinking legally-taxed beer ... not the home brew he is remebering):

Oh! It's fivepence a bottle, and that is the rub -
That's less than we pay for a glass in the pub!
Each sip I take, fills me with wrath ...
Who gets the cream, when I get the froth?

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 03:16 PM

What did it taste like Bert?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Bert
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 12:45 PM

...purses a whole lot lighter...

That's 'cos the buggers stole the other 140 pence out of the pound.

And remember Nine pounds nineteen and elevenpence threefarthings?

I remember when beer was one and seven and it went up to one and ten. At that time I was brewing my own for less than theepence a pint. And that was buying sugar, hops and malt at retail prices.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: HuwG
Date: 16 Feb 08 - 01:13 PM

" ...we all learnt multiplication tables up to 12 times. Don't kids still learn their tables?

Working in IT in the 1980's, it was sometimes necessary to do lots of calculations in hexadecimal i.e. using base 16. In this system, A is 10, B is eleven and so on up to F which is 15. OK, so how many channels can you have given that they have a minimum buffer size of 0x0100 and the available buffer space using redundant initialisation functions in the combined code and data segment is 0xFAB0 - 0xE810 ? (I have made things easy for you by using the ALIGN = PARA directive so that all function and segment addresses are multiples of 16.)

This was all in the days before Windows with on-screen calculators. It was almost all done on scrap paper, although there were one or two programmers who could do the sixteen times table in their heads.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 07:06 PM

Does that mean I can claim 144 when we get there That would be gross, Richard!

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 09:03 AM

That's not bad Giok when you consider that beer is up from about 2/- or less to £2.50 or more- that makes 25x - I doubt if your mini had a 25 gallon (110 litre) tank. £5 was almost a week's wages for a young'un then, don't forget.

But I did do a double take when I paid 43p for ONE parsnip in a local shop a while ago. 8 and bloody six for one sodding parsnip!

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 08:17 AM

The cost of 1 gallon of petrol now, is equal to what I used to pay to fill my mini up to the brim in 1966. That lasted me a whole week to and from work too.
G

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 07:56 AM

It may have become eaier for you. I still find myself thinking, bloody hell - I paid three pounds seventeen and six for that!

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Grab
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 07:56 AM

Anne, you had it easy, doing that in a shop.

My first semi-real job was as barman at our sailing club, aged 17. (I was underage, but it was a private club so that was OK. 17 years ago too, incidentally.) The cash register was an old mechanical monstrosity, and although it claimed to add up totals and work out the change, it simply didn't - its innards were buggered up somehow, so every so often it'd get things wrong. If it was majorly visible then it'd be fine, but generally it'd be a small amount which you wouldn't necessarily notice.

Result - anyone doing the bar had to be able to add up the price in their head, and work out the change in their head too. As Anne and other shop-workers know, there's some pressure to do this quickly. But you really don't know what pressure is until you've been adding up the numbers with two dozen beered-up blokes waiting to get served! :-)

My mum used to use the household accounts as a way of exercising my sister's and my mental arithmetic with a massive long series of "plus £5.29 - plus £29.45 - plus £86.20..." Having two of us gave a cross-check for when one of us got it wrong, and she must have been doing the sums herself to check as well.

"Five-and-twenty" is fairly old useage, isn't it - remember "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie"? German still uses that notation. Since that the rest of the number goes in order from highest to lowest, it's not exactly intuitive, which might be why it's pretty much died out.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 05:45 AM

Quite simple, this country had a ready made decimal note, i.e. the ten shilling note. Had they based the new currency on that, inflation would have been virtually nil.
The slavish devotion to the pound, we are not the only country to have a currency with this name, Turkey and Italy both have Lira which is the same thing. I believe that France once had a Livre too, cost this country dearly. By that I mean you and I, who are the people who end up paying for the governments mistakes every time.
I mean, it's not like it's their money they're spending is it? It's our taxes, and our opinion only matters when there's an election in the offing, because they want us to put an X next to their name on the ballot paper. Can't have them losing their reservation on the gravy train can we?


Rant

Rant

Rant

G

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 05:03 AM

Well purses were lighter because new pennies are about an eighth of the weight of old ones, with two point four times the value, and new ha'pennies (hah, I bet you forgot them!) even smaller and still worth more. And because shopkeepers rounded up the prices, so your pockets emptied quicker.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,Nessie
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 04:55 AM

It was this very day in 1971 that we went decimal. I remember the oddness of my first purchase (10 No.6 ciggies on the way to my last year at school, 11 new p), how mental arithmetic suddenly became a whole lot easier and purses a whole lot lighter.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Sooz
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 03:56 AM

You and me both makes 10 of us!

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Feb 08 - 02:58 AM

Does taht mean I can claim 144 when we get there, or is it

There are 100 different types of people: those who can do binary arithmetic, those who can't, those who don't know what it is and those who don't care?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Leadfingers
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 09:30 PM

100 and THAT's Decimal

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Leadfingers
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 09:29 PM

Its a BIT like doing Mental Arithmatic isnt it ?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Rowan
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 08:17 PM

Bert, where I work, the computer room used to teach students the arts of GIS has a slide rule on the wall mounted behind a sheet of perspex with a sign

"In case of emergency,
Break Glass"

But it's a long time since I taught anyone how to use one.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Bert
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 06:16 PM

...slide rules are relegated to museum displays...

Oi! I still use my slide rule. It beats the hell out of a calculator for on-site estimates.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 05:52 PM

'class'does not usually mean wealthy in the United States.

In U. S. slang, a person who has 'class' is 'stand-out,' 'first-rate,', 'top notch,' distinguished, 'elegant,' has superior qualities that put them above the crowd.
"She's a class-act," "she is classy."
"She is classy" means she knows how to dress with style, has good taste, is a 'beaut,' etc.

It also means a subdivision or group, e. g., "he belongs to the class of 1960" (the year he graduated from school, etc.), "he is a Brahmin," e. g. a member of one of the old dominant families in politics, money, education, usu. 'back east' (the Cabots Lodges, etc.), "he/she belongs to the upper class," e.g., well- educated, or has wealth, or is well-mannered, reads literature (Milton perhaps but not "True Detective" or comic books and subscribes to the NY Times but not a tabloid), etc.
"He belongs to the lower classes," e. g., he is 'blue-collar,' a pool-hall lout, has an immigrant's characteristics (obsolete), has no importance, no education, etc., etc.
"He ain't got no class" (applied regardless of income status), e. g., lacks finesse, doesn't know how to behave in 'polite' society, etc.

Many shades of meaning depending on the speaker or situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Rowan
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 05:16 PM

And there was I learning them up to 15.

Richard's Why is is socially acceptable to admit to being innumerate, but not to being illiterate? has been a longstanding question for me.

Like other posters here I learned on Lsd, tons, cwt, lbs & ozs etc and used the various tricks above but that was in the days BC; before calculators. Newport Boy mentioned the hand operated Facit; I never even saw one of these until I got to uni and recently inherited one that (apparently) was a war trophy from an uncle. By the time I got to uni there were electric rotary Facits and we preferred them but my supervisor could make the hand cranked one work faster than the electric ones.

The onset of cheap electronic calculators (my first HP was a week's pay) has allowed the mental arithmetic muscles to remain flabbily unused and mathematical tables and slide rules are relegated to museum displays, so our constant use of them, driving observable patterns and links between numbers and concepts into our consciousness, doesn't occur with current students. When they work checkout shifts their employers require them to rely on the electronic displays so they don't get much in the way of reinforcement that we did. So much for inability with arithmetic!

Then there's the university mathematical establishment. There are brillliant exceptions, but I've lost count of those who regard mathematical ability to be "so far above the common herd" and wish to retain their status as "members of a special club restricted to only those with superior qualifications." These people behave as though any lowering of the drawbridge, by teaching well enough for intelligent students to grasp and develop mathemetical concepts, will decrease their own special status. Fortunately, "real" mathematicians are better than that.

And, while most of us write and thus take an actively participatory role in literature, even if the writing isn't much more complex than emails, not many of us take a similarly active and participatory role in mathematics beyond basic arithmetic. Even when maths concepts are on display all around us in our daily routines.

Rant over! I feel better now.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 05:09 PM

Not as far as I know.

It's like

Mary had a little lamb
She also had a duck
She put them on the mantlepiece
To see if they would fall off.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 05:04 PM

To what whas Ian Dury referring when "But I got right up between her
Rum and her Ribena"? Is that rhyming slang perhaps?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Anne Lister
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 04:37 PM

McGrath - not up to 12, generally, these days ... they stop at 10!

Anne

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 02:16 PM

Decimals are easier for electronic calculators to handle, and for people, if you have pen and paper. But if you are doing it in the head I think £SD is easier.

we all learnt multiplication tables up to 12 times. Don't kids still learn their tables?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 01:52 PM

All you folks commenting on the easy way to do the pound shillings and pence -- yes, I did do that rounding up and taking off but I still think it made for somewhat complex math compared to 100 pennies to the pound, 100 cents to the dollar.

Guess we need spell check on Mudcat -- connotations it is! Thanks for the correction, Richard

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Newport Boy
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 01:22 PM

Bert - converting to decimal and back was the long-winded way, and we didn't have calculators, so it was also inaccurate.

The first calculator I used for serious calculations was a Facit hand cranked rotary machine, with three sets of numbers. Worked to 15 digits, and accurate to better than 12. I could work out the mean and standard deviation of a set of 24 results on that quicker than using log tables.

As a site engineer in the 60s, needing to calculate areas and volumes with dimensions in feet and inches, I simply used duodecimal multiplication, writing X and L for 10 and 11 decimal - so 10 was 12. It wasn't difficult - we all learnt multiplication tables up to 12 times.

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,Edthefolkie
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 12:38 PM

Back in the 60's before the change to decimal in the UK, and WAY before computers, I used to run 2 bank sub branches. I had to enter every transaction on a huge piece of paper, then get it to balance with the cash in the till once I'd got the door closed at midday. This was very difficult at one branch as the whole village used to pay in their ill gotten gains - they were all selling stuff from catalogues to each other! It's the inbreeding you know.

If I hadn't balanced everything, I had to figure it all out on the bus going back to the main branch, as English kids of 19 didn't generally run cars in those days.

Working in a bank in those days didn't half improve your mental arithmetic - not to mention your muscles - the old coinage was much heavier than the decimal stuff. As I found when I dropped a gigantic cloth bag of old pennies on the bandit alarm trigger under the till....

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Anne Lister
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 07:42 AM

I was a Saturday girl in Marks and Spencer, working on menswear where all the shirts were priced with the odd 11d.... 19/11d, 29/11d and the luxury range at 39/11d (and yes, that's how the tickets were written, although maths experts amongst you and Brits of a certain age will know that 39/11d is actually £1 19 11d). And I became quite quick, rounding up to the nearest 10s and removing the extra pennies. These days, what with decimal currency AND electronic tills, the sales staff don't know how lucky they are.
Oh, and I was kept on my toes, because my Dad was the manager of the store where I was working, and he would sneak up on me and suddenly say he'd have four of these and two of those so how much change would he get from a tenner ...

Anne

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: TheSnail
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 06:34 AM

Round up- two bob, 3 bob, 6 bob. That's eleven shillings. Now take off the odd bits

Even in these decimal days people don't seem to get that trick. Back in more affluent times I bought three CDs at a festival. They were two at £12.99 and one at £13.99. I watched in amazement as the chap wrote them in a column and went 9+9+9 is 27, write down the 7 and carry 2...

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 04:53 AM

You never learned the easy way to do LSD? It was quite simple. Say you have three items, one and tenpence-ha'penny, two- and-eleven, and 5/9. Round up- two bob, 3 bob, 6 bob. That's eleven shillings. Now take off the odd bits, penny-ha'penny, penny and threepence. That's fivepence ha'penny, Knock that off the eleven bob, and you've got ten-and-sixpence-ha'penny.

Now calculate 5lb of carrots at eightpence ha'penny a pound, 18lb of potatoes at 1/9 a stone, 3 ounces of bacon at 2/7 a pound, and a quart of vinegar at 19/4 a gallon...

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 04:00 AM

Or even "connotations"?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 02:26 AM

Perhaps because they don't quite equate? I am very had at math and could never do calculus or anything like that but I can do basic math and percentages and 'manage'....... I don't see that as quite the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy and all the huge conurtations it has.....

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Feb 08 - 01:19 AM

Why is is socially acceptable to admit to being innumerate, but not to being illiterate?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 10:49 PM

God -- I do remember log tables -- you are giving me nightmares.........!

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Rowan
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 10:09 PM

The books of tables I remember weren't for the benefit of students; as McGrath and Trubrit mention, we had to learn the hard way. The books were for minor clerks and others in business before calculators were cheap or even electronic, in most cases. The only books of tables I had access to as a student were logarithms, sines, cosines etc.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 09:51 PM

Nor me -- NO CHARTS OR CHEAT SHEETS.

I do agree that learning to do this without calculators was helpful....I used to be a 'Saturday girl' at WH Smiths in the days when cards were priced at some appalling amount like 1 shilling 10 pennies and one halfpenny --- when some one was buying 8 of those and 6 pencils at 5 pence (or whatever) -- you had to learn to do math. But I never had a chart -- instead we had customers who would gleefully point out if we added up wrong by half a penny -- in a shop with a line out the door!!!

The two shilling piece was a florin (don't know why)

A quarter of six is 5.45 -- but I have never heard an English person say anything like --- quarter of -- instead it would be quarter to; and not quarter after (but rather quarter past).

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 08:05 PM

I never did it that way. After all in exams they'd never have allowed you to have a chart like that.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Rowan
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 08:05 PM

And there were also octavo (and smaller) books of such tables, including ones for calculations of earnings for varying amounts of capital, periods and interest rates, whether simple or compound interest.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Bert
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 06:39 PM

Well now; those of us who are old enough to remember how it was done, did it like this.

We had a chart that converted shillings and pence to a decimal fraction of a pound. we multiplied or divided as needed and then looked up the chart to convert it back.

We did the same with non trivial calculations regarding Tons, cwts, qtrs, pounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 05:30 PM

How do blind people manage in the States if the notes are all the same size?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Darowyn
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 03:50 PM

We should have gone for a Hexadecimal coinage, like pounds and ounces in weight.
We'd need fewer denominations of coin, and the maths would all be binary.
Take the current value of a fiver as the basis,call it a megapound, you'd need a half fiver, a quarter fiver (about a pound) an eighth, (50p) a, sixteenth (25p), a thirty second (a bob) a sixty fourth (5p), and these days, that's about all, though traditionalists would probably need one more copper coin representing a 128th of the basic unit.
Eight coins, to cover everything from a penny to a five pound note.
So there'd be 128 pennies in the megapound.
For US catters, why do all US banknotes look the same?
In Europe they are all different colours (spelled with a 'u') or even different sizes.
Even natives of the USA have to read the numbers.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 03:18 PM

..3 pounds 6 shillings and tuppence and multiply by 8.

Did that in my head with no problems - much easier than similar tricks with decimals. Eight times £3.31 (the nearest I can get to £3 6s 2d) - well, I can do that, but I'd sooner have a pencil and paper to check up, because the columns tend to get muddled up in my head if I'm not careful.

Working out in your head whether you had enough change to buy a random collection of small purchases was actually much easier before decimalisation, believe it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 01:07 PM

...3 pounds 6 shillings and tuppence and multiply by 8.

Did that in my head with no problems - much easier than similar tricks with decimals. Eight times £3.31 (the nearest I can get to £3 8s 2d) - well, I can do that, but I'd sooner have a pencil and paper to check up, because the columns tend to get muddled up in my head if I'm not careful.

Working out in your head whether you had enough change to buy a random collection of small purchases was actually much easier before decimalisation, believe it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: The Walrus
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 12:54 PM

danensis,

"...In my bit of Yorkshire it was "five and twenty to", and "five and twenty past"..."
I've also heard it as 'five and twenty up' and 'five and twenty down'.

W

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: danensis
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 11:43 AM

"In England I've never heard anyone say half to six - it always goes 5 past, 10 past, quarter past, twenty past, twenty five past, half past (or half six for example), twenty five to, twenty to, quarter to, ten to, five to "


In my bit of Yorkshire it was "five and twenty to", and "five and twenty past"

John

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: GUEST,The black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 13 Feb 08 - 07:59 AM

Anyone know about the value of the amounts mentioned in the lyric "Malt's gone down from an old angel to a French crown"?

Subject: RE: BS: Another question for Brits
From: Stu
Date: 12 Feb 08 - 01:16 PM

Close Richard, it's Prestbury - Alderley Edge has always been nicer in my opinion (partly because of the Edge itself) although when Beckham moved in it was put on the map and footballers started arriving. Then he moved out and Rooney knocked down a nice house in Prestbury village and threw up a modern mansion and the rest is history.

I haven't lived there for 18-odd years and I don't miss it.