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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2481 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It's a good thing we put at very few politicians on British banknotes - the row when feminists decide we need a woman and the only serious candidate is Margaret Thatcher would destroy confidence in the currency.

I'm not sure why they chose Jane Austen instead of Florence Nightingale. The woman who invented modern nursing vs a woman who wrote six books about thinly veiled author inserts finding rich husbands. My guess is that the civil servants who decide are more likely to be English Lit graduates than nurses.

They change the portraits roughly every 20 years - Florence Nightingale was on the £10 from 1975-1994, making her the first woman to appear on British money who was neither the Queen nor Britannia.

I stand corrected. I wonder who's next. Hopefully not Mary Seacole.

I would favour Rosalind Franklin. Agatha Christie is the other obvious candidate.

I don't think anyone knows what Ada Lovelace looked like, and her achievements are overrated anyway. J K Rowling is still alive, which rules her out. Enid Blyton is too politically incorrect to be a serious candidate. Emmeline Pankhurst hasn't been on a banknote, and if she counts as a politician she probably won't be - Churchill is the only politician featured to date.

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