off topic-uk money?

[Dave Berry]

> alright now i may be the only one not to know but how much is a quid?

Ah - you're running into the problem that people still use pre-decimal
units as slang.  A quid used to be 20 florins, which translates into
new money as #2.50.  16 quids made 1 foal, a unit which nobody has used
for centuries, but which was alledgedly the cost of a young horse in the
reign of Henry II.   12 foals made a pony, i.e. #480, and this has come
into slang use for #500.

Other, less common, terms are a guinea, which was a pound and a shilling,
a shilling being 1/20 of a pound, a sovereign, which was 8 pounds and 8
shillings, and half-a-crown, which was of course half a sovereign.  There
used to be a unit called the bishop, but this was banned in the mid-1800s.

> and what the hell is a pence?

1/100 of a pound, of course.  (Pre-decimalisation it was 1/240 of a pound,
there being 12 pennies to the shilling, but everything is simpler now).
BTW, the term for the pre-decimalised currency was L.S.D., standing
for pounds (livre), shillings, and pence (denarii).

Dave.

Warning: some of the above is lies, but not all.

ObCD: Richard Thompson, "Watching The Dark".