It helps that every police related firearm discharge is automatically referred to the IOPC. About 0.02% of operations involving police firearms involve a discharge.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-use-of-firearms-statistics-april-2024-to-march-2025/police-use-of-firearms-statistics-april-2024-to-march-2025

UK police are trained to a higher standard than they are in the US, they are also not normally heavily armed. Armed police do exist and have even higher training standards.

That doesn't mean they don't have problems, but it is usually less often and less severe.

When it does happen it tends to be less fatal, since our police mostly don't carry guns.

It has been for ages.

I guess people from wherever you're from don't understand anything they're talking about before commenting online.

I guess brits can't read an entire thread since someone already said that.

British money already is different sizes and printed in different colours.

Part of five eyes, of course it is. Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

Why do you think they want backdoors into encryption?

Just to counter balance the discussion, no.

Yep, lots of shops, cafes have a small camera in the corner, but most are.either broken or only live - ie no recording. And they accept cash... in fact lots of takeaways only take cash.

There's ANPR on major roads, but not on minor ones. (I recall there is / was? an app for tracking where ANPR cameras are located on OSM maps)

I can go about my life with very little surveilance, but I don't live in a major city.

I was also told recently thelat even the mobile speed detector vans publish - rougly - where they'll be on Facebook, so it's not all bad.

But, digital surveillance (think of the kids / terrorists) is definitely eroding privacy and affecting the general public to move in the wrong direction.

Every five eyes member is.

Getting that way, I think it’s more of a culture than the state though. The main reason there’s so much CCTV is that nobody wants to be the one person or shop on the street that doesn’t have it, it makes them the soft target.

As for the online safety thing, most people seem to be in favour of it. Most parents say they’ll do anything for their kids and they think that giving up some privacy is a small price to pay when there are so many problems with kids and mental health these days. Personally I think the legal stuff is doing far more damage, things like influencers pressuring them to always look like models, adverts convincing them they need the latest iPhone, etc. How often do you hear about issues from watching porn? The long term solution is education

Also, age verification could be done in a more privacy respecting way than constantly requiring someone to scan their personal details; some kind of certificate and RSA type time based code. I picture it something like the government confirms your ID and gives you a certificate, you use that to authenticate to some kind of time based ticket service, which you then give to a company to prove you’re over 18. They know you’re old enough but have no link back to your ID.

Yes.

It probably annoys shop keepers as it blows away all their change.

It's real money, honest.

We don't even really have paper money any more, it's all polymer 🤷

All votes are public on all instances.

Lemvotes.org

If they weren’t public, federation wouldn’t work.

Maybe say that instead of downvoting.

Same for you. Votes are public.

Yes, downvote for asking why not fix your broken currency. That’ll encourage discussions.

You asked:

But thinking about it more why would a large denomination be any easy or harder to forge than a lower one?

I explained why your large bills are easier to forge.

Ummmm....

There’s actually also a few notes of huge denominations like £100,000,000, they’re kept in banks and never enter circulation. I recall it’s something to do with issuing Scottish and Northern Ireland notes, those ones that are still pounds but are issued by places other than the Bank of England.

Because historically they were to high to be used much. So many retailers staff were less able to ID fakes. Hence fakes were created.

The. By the mid 2000s as prices got to the point hey were more useful. They were still high enough that card payments became common. So retailers rarely had the till cash to change them.

On the bright side, it's Friday now and my 3 gallons of mead are closer to being ready. Only got 5 bottles left.