Is it time to ditch the penny?

Former_MSE_Becca

Poll started 21 May 2012, click here to vote
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[/FONT] t the beginning of the month, the Canadian government stopped minting the one cent piece, as they’re no longer worth enough to be useful. Should we be following suit with our own copper coins?
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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Which of these is closest to your view?[/FONT]
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Ditch the 1p
Ditch the 1p & 2p
Ditch the 1p, 2p & 5p
Don’t ditch anything



Click 'post reply' to discuss below. Thanks


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Moneyben

Ditch both 1 and 2 pence coins, the way prices have gone up their just not worth the cost to the banks in minting these coins and having to transport them to banks. It will save shops money in not having to bank them. And admit it we all have a pot with copper coins in as they are just a pain to carry round. And when the pot is full and you've lugged them to the bank WOW you've got a couple of quid, not really worth the effort. Some of you might say why not scrap all coins? well the answer....5, 10,20 pence coins still have some value.

mdr86

Ditch cash full stop :P

kimbalena

As soon as you start scrapping lower end coins, the shops will not pass the saving on from not having to bank them, they will just round everything up, so consumers lose over time! If you think about it you buy say 40 items in a weekly shop and each of those was a denomination ending 6, 7, 8 or 9p (things don't tend to be price at 1,2,3, or 4s), all will be rounded up. So that 1 shop will cost you between 40p and £1.60 more. And this is one shop once, imagine how much more we will all be spending on everything we buy!

Pmarmalade

I agree with kimbalena! That's pretty much the viewpoint I cam in to post.

MarkLS12

You have not done a very good job of explaining what Canada (and other countries who have done similar) are doing.

It does NOT mean that all prices need to be to the nearest 5p.

Things would still be priced as they are now, but at the till your total would be rounded to the nearest 5p

• Prices are rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5 pence for sales ending in 1p, 2p, 6p, 7p;
• Prices are rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5 pence for sales ending in 3p, 4p, 8p, 9p;
• Values ending in 0p or 5p remain unchanged

For example:
If you bought 3 things at 99p each, the total would be £2.97.
This is rounded to the nearest 5p, so £2.97 would become £2.95.

marlasinger

They did this some years ago in Australia, and it's as MarkLS12 says: only the total is rounded either down or up.

I think get rid of them. I hardly ever use them. Now if parking meters took them, that'd be another story.

SailorSam

Don't ditch either of them.
I've got a big whiskey bottle that i throw all 1p and 2p coins in each night, it's got about 6 or 7 inches to go before it's full now and it's taken years to get this far.

queenmedusa

Don't ditch the copper! Finding pennies is like finding unexpected wealth. I found 2 pennies in the street last week and it really cheered me up! Yes we all have pots of pennies but many of us use those pots to save towards things, without the coppers we wouldn't be able to do this. My friend cashed the contents of his giant vodka bottle and it came to over £300!

liz545

You need to have a lowest value coin, and it makes most sense in a metric system for that to be 1, surely?

Oraged

YES! Half a billion of these are minted every year (they cost over a penny to produce) and nobody uses them. I've had people in the store I work fish out a 20p from a purse full of coppers to cover 13p. Many people don't even want them if they are due them and simply tell me to keep them.

They have no buying power, vending machines won't take them, even the supermarket self service kiosks try to offload them onto customers as change.

As others have mentioned prices do not change. If you pay by card you pay the exact amount you would pay today, it's simply that a cash transaction would be Swedish rounded. Many countries have done this before, most recently Canada last month.

In these tough times of cuts scraping the useless penny is a NO BRAINER! I'm frankly astonished our politicians would make cuts anywhere else before getting rid of pennies and other needless expenses.