I sent a comment (see below) to the Irish Times as a reaction to Cly's. In fact, the euro nations have adopted largely British structured coinage, as shown in the sequence 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 cents and 1 and 2 euro coins. The Netherlands used largely US type coinage for the lower denominations in cents: 1, 5, 10, 25 cents, 1 and 2.50 guilders. The latter coin was called a 'rijksdaalder', which translates to 'dollar of the realm'! Last night we also lost our dollar. But we did not have 1 guilder or 1 'dollar' banknotes. These went out the window decades ago; more recently the five guilder banknote made way for a coin. Our banknotes had this sequence: 10, 25, 50, 100, 250 and 1000 guilders as opposed to 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 euro.
BTW, I saw the celebrations of the New Year in Peking on television. A large illuminated sign said 2001-01-01! Han The comment: Cly T'aurus says that we should have adopted US style coinage and banknotes. O yes, we should have adopted a 1 euro bank note, of course. Or better, we should have adopted the dollar. And when we are at it, we should also abandon the metric system and adopt those wonderfully rational and user friendly United States measuring units and ditch all our languages for English. What about that wonderfully rational UK/US time notation of am/pm, which is beautifully suited to people who cannot count further than 12, and then have to start again? Or that logical sequence of month-day-year while writing dates? Do I spy the Ugly American here? Yes, I do. Thank God, many US citizens are not like that; I can vouch for it. Now the world will have two global currencies and the euro will compete with the dollar. I would rather pool sovereignty with fellow European nations than doing the things I mentioned above. Up the EU, up the euro, up the metric system, up the ISO 8601 standard for date- and time notations! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Han Maenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, 2001 January 01, 08:09 Subject: Comment in Irish Times > A comment in the Irish times in the forum under 'Breaking News'. Oh, com'on. It's a new currency not rocket science. You make it sound like its hard to figure out - you've been doing it every time you go abroad on holiday - how hard can this be. You've too many coins though - do you really need a 2 cent coin? Or a 2 Euro coin? You should have followed the US method of coinage and notes. Why? Because it works and the world uses the US dollar as it's standard. Once again you EUROS (formerly Irish) have to reinvent the wheel just so you can not be like us. But you'll eventually get it. Happy New Year. Goodbye to Irish nationhood! DeVelera must be spinning in his grave! Cly T'aurus, USA
