larryhatch - 11:34 am on May 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

Dear Greedy:

The dollar is indeed a (fairly large) fraction of the GBP.

When I first visited England (1965), I didn't much mind paying $2.40 per quid,
as each quid (pound) had 20 shillings, and each shilling was 12 pence (pennies)
By an odd coincidence, this made the us cent (penny) nearly equal to the British penny.

What I really liked was getting smashed on all that stinky warm beer.
No, it wasn't Coors, but for 11 pence I had a nice warm 20-ounce pint of bitter!

In the states, you can't find a warm bucket of spit for 11 cents, then or now.
What is more, I wasn't quite 21 years of age yet, but that didn't concern the barman either.

Decades later, the economic landscape has changed until I can't tell a franc from a euro.

Britain alone keeps the price of beer below that of gasoline.

"America", meaning the USA and Canada, would feel very very lonely without the Brits. -Larry