Thursday"™s Club meeting will now take place at the Masonic Hall in Deyncourt Gardens, Upminster. The speaker is Mr Ian Davidson from Bank of England (New plastic bank notes)

Polymer Bank Notes

Today’s meeting was held at the Upminster Masonic Hall as a result of a double booking at our usual venue, The Railway Hotel Hornchurch.. Following on from an excellent meal at this most interesting and fascinating of venues we were entertained by Mr Ian Davidson  from the Bank of England.

In a most humorous an informative talk Ian explained how we would soon be experiencing one of the biggest changes to our currency in 300 years. Having grown up with our familiar paper currency we are about to enter the world of Polymer (plastic) Bank Notes. Among the several advantages of introducing this new type of bank note the biggest one was that it would much more difficult to produce counterfeit copies. It was pointed out to us that we are arriving quite late to this revolution as over 30 countries already use this type of bank note which was first introduced by Australia as early as 1988.

In September 2016 the £5 note, featuring Winston Churchill ,will be introduced and in September 2017 the £10 note, with Jane Austen, will be issued.

Although we know that the £20 note will feature the artist Turner the date of introduction has yet to be decided and the introduction of a £50 Polymer Note is still under discussion.

The virtues and benefits of this new type of currency were fully explained and for those who were unable to be at today’s meeting further information can be found on the Bank of England website: www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/polymer

George Larkey