back to article QUIDOCALYPSE: Blighty braces for £100 MILLION cost of new £1 coin

As we predicted yesterday, it hasn't taken coin-guzzling machine operators long to kick off moaning about the cost of converting kit to accept Blighty's new 12-sided quid*, slated to hits the streets in 2017. The proposed 12-sided pound coin. Pic: The Royal Mint We suggested the retrofit bill for the old thrupenny-inspired …

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  1. TRT Silver badge

    It has one face...

    The Queen's.

    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: It has one face...

      And is it just me, or does that rendering make it look like she has gills? The royal family can't trace their lineage back to Innsmouth by any chance, can they?

      1. phil dude
        Coat

        Re: It has one face...

        inbreeding does strange things....

        P.

        1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

          Re: It has one face...

          Not inbreeding, only the effects of being an old army lorry driver.

        2. phil dude
          Trollface

          Re: It has one face...

          for those downvotes not paying attention , royalty is defined by its inbreeding.

          It is only as a geneticist, we can have a laugh about it....

          P.

      2. Captain Hogwash
        Alien

        Re: It has one face...

        Not gills. Floppy lizard bits.

        1. TRT Silver badge

          @Captain Hogwash

          Floppy Lizzy bits?

          1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

            Re: @Captain Hogwash

            Eugh! Pass the mind-bleach!

      3. kryptonaut

        Re: It has one face...

        Not only gills - if you look at the image you can see she has one grumpy mouth facing forwards for when she's talking to prime ministers etc., but below that she has a smiley mouth to be displayed to the peasants kneeling at her feet.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It has one face...

      And on the reverse, the guillotine used to chop off the head on the other side.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    £500 to update each parking machine?

    One suspects the council contractors are having a bit of a Gerald Scarfe with the opportunity to pluck an extra-contractual price out of thin air. If that's what it really costs then someone's done a very bad job somewhere along the way.

    1. g e

      Also and excellent opportunity

      To upgrade the fecking things to take card payments at the same time so save foraging for change in the first place.

      1. Piro Silver badge

        Re: Also and excellent opportunity

        Contactless card payments on those things would be perfect.

        The person who thought phone payments were a good idea should be shot. Awkward, hopeless things.

    2. Velv
      Coat

      Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

      Golden opportunity here, they should be upgrading the machines to take BitCoin at the same time

      1. monkeyfish

        Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

        Or remove them altogether. Your town centre shops will receive an up-tick in sales as a result of having more people willing to park. Said shops may then not go out of business, and empty shops may be re-filled. The council will receive money for having the shops, and not the parking.

        1. Amorous Cowherder
          Facepalm

          Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

          Oh dear God! Way too much common sense from "monkeyfish", huge headache, need a lie down...

        2. Fonant

          Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

          Except if you make parking free then all the parking spaces will be filled all the time by people parking all day, so there won't be any parking available for shoppers. You need good turnover of parking spaces, ideally, so low cost for short periods, and much higher costs for people taking up a space for a long time.

          One should also remember that the value of the land that a typical urban car park takes up is often extremely high: is it better to use it for parking cars, or do you build houses, flats, shops, or business premises on the land that generate more wealth for the local community?

          In reality it's much better to make it easier for people to walk, bus, cycle, train to the shops. Cars are horribly inefficient ways of getting lots of people into a small area.

          1. OldTimer1955

            Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

            "Except if you make parking free then all the parking spaces will be filled all the time by people parking all day..."

            This canard is flown every time. It is nonsense. You don't let people park all day, you still time limit the parking, you just don't make them pay for it. ....numberplate recognition... in answer to the next question.

            "Cars are horribly inefficient ways of getting lots of people into a small area."

            No they are not. They are a very efficient way of moving a dispersed population into and out of a small area. We have run the experiment in real time. No more efficient method exists.

            Town planners have to accept that people prefer (now need) to use their car to get from home to 'the shops'. Once they are in their car they can either go to the big box on the outskirts and park for free, or go to the town centre and pay through the nose to park. People are not perverse taken as a whole. If public transport was efficient it would be used, but it is systemically impossible to have efficient public transport with a dispersed population.

            1. Don Jefe

              Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

              I reckon I have looked, 'academically' at the parking solutions in every large city on Earth. The only shared attribute is that they all suck. I like the idea of massive parking facilities, outside the city where you pick up an electric golf cart/bumper car and drive that into the city. If nothing else it would be fun.

              Moving on, coins with flats on the edges completely disable one of the most clever, and inexpensive, theft/counterfeit protection systems ever invented. I have never seen a great solution to the not round coin issue either. False positives skyrocket with everything I've ever seen.

              Have you ever tried to create a fake coin to put in a vending machine/arcade game? If you haven't, I'll just tell you it's really fucking hard to do. The most effective element in that system of protection, and the most difficult to fool, is the speed of the coin as it travels down the chutes. The speed of the coin, being a function of diameter and weight, is really, really tricky to bypass.

              When you stick a coin in the slot, it is, effectively stopped for a fraction of a second (by a variety of different mechanisms) and the time is recorded from that point to another shortly after, to calculate speed. Incidentally, this mechanism is also what robs you of violent satisfaction after you shove the same fucking coin, into the slot for the 19th time with increasing force each time.

              The speed test is the only, truly, dynamic validation check in the system. If you emasculate the system by eliminating that test, everything else is fairly easily bypassed with a little bit of measuring and weighing.

              It's not I don't think effective countermeasures can't be created (they may already exist for all I know) but I really, really like the elegance of the speed test. That's just good engineering. Far, far more impressive, I think, than other, more complex alternatives.

            2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

              Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

              "If public transport was efficient it would be used, but it is systemically impossible to have efficient public transport with a dispersed population."

              I'll call bullshit on that one.

              Here near Philadelphia, PA, we have public transportation in extremely heavy use every single day of the week.

              But, for elders, a motor vehicle is the way to go. It's hard enough getting into and out of one's own car, climbing onto a bus or train is a herculean effort in the extreme.

              As for me, I tend to purchase a month's worth of groceries in one go. That is a non-starter if I were taking public transportation.

              Each method of transport to its task, for each excels at their task. But, to go to "the shops", it's largely the motor vehicle that accomplishes the task.

              With human parking enforcement excelling at enforcement.

          2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

            Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

            "Cars are horribly inefficient ways of getting lots of people into a small area."

            Unless you're an old fart, who is unable to get around in any other manner.

            Or don't we old farts have rights in Old Blighty now? :P

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

            @Fonant: "In reality it's much better to make it easier for people to walk, bus, cycle, train to the shops. Cars are horribly inefficient ways of getting lots of people into a small area."

            However, cars are incredibly efficient ways of getting heavy shopping back home. Shopping is a two-way trip.

            Good luck cycling back with your new TV / crockery set / duvet / etc.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: £500 to update each parking machine?

              "Good luck cycling back with your new TV / crockery set / duvet / etc."

              Yes, a very good point. Getting a new TV home on your bike would be a bit tricky. Mind you, I think it's nearly twenty years since I last bought a crockery set. And probably twenty years before I buy another.

              What I do is use one of these new-fangled "delivery services" that some retailers have started using in the last half century. I think most of them use vans, not bikes, these days.

  3. Gerhard den Hollander

    do away with cash ... plot

    Maybe a good excuse to get rid of all those pesky coin operated machines, and switch to credit/debit/NFC machines .. and screw all those without debit cards, tourists with incompatible cards

    worked really well over here ....

  4. Mage Silver badge

    Facebook?

    Why?

    you have perfectly good forums without trying to help Zuckerberg's income with his very creepy walled garden.

    No thanks.

    (I'll keep my FB account for stalking though).

    1. Bill Fresher

      Re: Facebook?

      Facebook - so only people who don't have proper jobs can comment.

      1. monkeyfish

        Re: Facebook?

        The rest of us can skive off in here...

  5. FartingHippo
    Headmaster

    "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

    Huh? Don't the twelve bevels make up the outer edge? So 14.

    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

      I count:

      12 outer bevels - the 'sides'

      12 inner bevels on each side

      1 recessed face on each side

      1 raised edge between the bevels on each side

      Than makes a total of 40 faces, along with 96 edges and 72 vertices, if I count them all correctly.

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

        It was designed using some sort of 3D CAD/CAM modelling software. Should be possible to get a face count.

        1. FartingHippo
          Boffin

          Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

          Fair enough, but simplified to a dodecadonal prism then 14 is right. If you're going to be nerdy about it then you've missed quite a few radiused sections out (those corners aren't razor sharp) not to mention a boat-load of facets in the image.

          I still maintain that the 15 in the article is correct under no reasonable interpretation.

      2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

        ...obviously I'm not counting the raised lettering, or the queen's head. If you count them, then good luck to you...

        1. FartingHippo

          Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

          Let's keep is simple and agree that it's topologically identical to a sphere :)

          1. hplasm
            Happy

            Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

            Looks pretty much like a cow to me too- ( NOT Liz...).

            Moreso than Tesco milk, anyway...

            1. monkeyfish

              Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

              12 sides, 2 faces, and the Queens face = 15, duh.

            2. Jamie Jones Silver badge

              Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

              Who cares how many faces it has? More importantly, how many of these coins does it take to fill Wales/an olympic swimming pool/a pint glass.

        2. Piro Silver badge

          Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

          Good point, those aren't flat textures.

          Far more complex than can be guessed.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

        40 is my answer too..(I discounted the detail, font face etc, as its not a fixed part of the coins shape, detail will vary over versions) but I'm not going to join arse book to post it there....

        1. Eddy Ito

          Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

          It seems to be a question of definition. Are we talking faces, facets, or planar surfaces? I would include the raised textual detail as well as the raised edge as planar surfaces but as they are merely parallel surfaces slightly raised or depressed they do not define a face or facet. The 12 internal bevels, presumably on each side, as well as the 12 edge surfaces would all be facets. I could go along with 14 faces including the two sides.

          On a side note, I've been wishing the US would do a faceted edge on the $1 coin for years. They boned the S.B.A. dollar by dropping the hendecagonal edge and changing it to an internal design element around the standard ribbed circular edge and making it too close to the size of a quarter. I feel a faceted edge would have seen it be much more acceptable to the general public as it could be easily distinguished by feel alone. The latest one isn't bad but it would still benefit from a faceted edge.

          1. Charles Manning

            Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

            Each 3-atom triangle gives you a face. There are billions of em.

      4. Charlie Clark Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: "it has 15 faces (12 bevels, obverse, reverse, outer edge)"

        More importantly, where's the free model in order to be able to print your own?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Deal With It!

    Coin and Note currency were developed for human to human payment for goods and services. Not as a token for electronic vending.

    If you want to stick a machine out that accepts currency meant for human to human payment then it's up to you to foot the bill for adapting the machine to handle a new type of coin. Be thankful it's only a dodecagon, not something crazy like a triangle or square, Australia has a dodecagon 50 cent coin so the hardware already exists for the basic type of coin, not it needs to be adapted to the sizing.

    In fact, a lot of modern coin acceptors will most likely work when put into a learning mode and a few coins pumped through and others a firmware update.

    1. cyborg
      Boffin

      Re: Deal With It!

      " Be thankful it's only a dodecagon, not something crazy like a triangle or square"

      That will never happen - coins must have constant width (i.e. if you rolled it then its height doesn't change, unlike a square or triangle) otherwise machines won't be able to deal with them correctly.

      1. d3rrial

        Re: Deal With It!

        The dodecagon doesn't have a constant width, mate.

        1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

          Re: Re: Deal With It!

          Indeed. Unlike the Brit 20 and 20p pieces, it's not a Reuleaux polygon.

          1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

            Re: Deal With It!

            "Reuleaux polygon"

            Show off

        2. cyborg

          Re: Deal With It!

          If I'm not mistaken the image show one that does - the sides are rounded off. Although that may be just an artifact of the image. If that is the case this seems like a pretty bad idea all round.

        3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Deal With It!

          Although some triangles do as Mr Reuleaux will tell you

      2. PNGuinn

        Re: Deal With It!

        I seem to remember, back in my childhood in Ceylon in the '50s there was a square coin - 5 cents I think - it had slightly rounded corners.

        OOOOH LOOK _ PRIOR ART.

    2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Deal With It!

      Have a look at this Numberphile video on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUCSSJwO3GU. It discusses constant width shapes & solids.

      (Numberphile is an excellent geek YouTube channel BTW)

    3. Anonymous Bullard

      Re: Deal With It!

      In fact, a lot of modern coin acceptors will most likely work when put into a learning mode and a few coins pumped through and others a firmware update.

      Exactly.

      Any coin-machine company that is run by people who are old enough to work will know that the size/shape/weight of coins is not static. If the "whole" machine needs to be scrapped and replaced, then unfortunately that's their own fault for being so short-sighted.

      At most, the slot/coin mechanism will need replacing. They make these things interchangeable so they can be sold to different countries.

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Deal With It!

        A triangular rubber coin 6,800 miles along each side?

        1. richardcox13

          Re: Deal With It!

          > A triangular rubber coin 6,800 miles along each side?

          Fiddling small change then, and thus not accepted by glacta-banks.

        2. PNGuinn
          Go

          Re: Deal With It!

          EXcellent! that should fix the parking meters / machines for good and all. Would love to see 'em trying to empty the tin.

        3. Ketlan
          Unhappy

          Re: Deal With It!

          I've got twenty of these saved wit Mt Gox. Er...

    4. TitterYeNot

      Re: Deal With It!

      "In fact, a lot of modern coin acceptors will most likely work when put into a learning mode and a few coins pumped through and others a firmware update."

      Well, they'll work until you're having a really bad day, you're running late, there's a queue for the machine behind you, and it's your very last coin, and then the thing's guaranteed to go straight through the bloody machine into the reject slot again and again and again...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Deal With It!

        Well, they'll work until you're having a really bad day, you're running late, there's a queue for the machine behind you, and it's your very last coin, and then the thing's guaranteed to go straight through the bloody machine into the reject slot again and again and again...

        That's actually the critical mission detector, and it's the very reason these things get upgrades. Some features must be kept in working order..

        /sarcasm

      2. swampdog

        Re: Deal With It!

        @TitterYeNot

        Can I employ you to stand behind me in queues? That should ensure it doesn't happen to me. On second thoughts it may only reduce the chance to 50/50 but now that I'm getting my cynical head switched back on, it will likely double the chance.

        You've just done yourself out of a job - which kinda reinforces your original point!

    5. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: Deal With It!

      Australia has a dodecagon 50 cent coin so the hardware already exists for the basic type of coin

      Except that most Australian parking meters don't accept 50c coins, they only accept the round ones. Cos validating a dodecagon is a right royal republican pain in the arse.

      (Icon is an octagon not a dodecagon, but it's the closest icon there is)

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Deal With It!

      "In fact, a lot of modern coin acceptors will most likely work when put into a learning mode and a few coins pumped through and others a firmware update."

      And the rest benefit from the use of a pipe cutter. :)

  7. Chris Miller

    Coin-operated trolleys are mechanically very simple - they're not collecting money, just giving you an incentive to return the trolley. Any object vaguely similar in size and shape to a £1 coin (€1 or even a suitable washer) will work equally well.

    Coin operated ticket machines, dispensers of snacks/condoms, etc. will require much more careful adjustment or even replacement.

  8. Zog The Undeniable

    It's George Osborne (no "e"). As in Ozzy, who probably wouldn't do a worse job as Chancellor (OK, the economy is belatedly growing, mainly because we're not up the brown creek with the euro-using countries, but stuff like Help To Buy is completely bonkers freakonomics).

    1. bigphil9009

      I think you mean no "u" :-)

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Are you implying that the chancellor has 'e' ?

        Can he sell enough of them for it to be the path to prosperity?

  9. hazzamon

    From the Daily Fail link...

    '12-sided design will resemble coin last used before decrimalisation in 1971'

    Typical Daily Mail, they have crime on their minds so much that they can't stop thinking about it!

  10. TRT Silver badge

    No hole...

    in the middle so it can be threaded onto a cord and carried round the neck? You know, like the Chinese coins.

  11. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    Coin recognition

    I would imagine this works by mesauring up to three things:

    1) The size of the coin

    2) The weight

    3) The shape

    For 1, I can't see this being more difficult than changing the size of a slot in a metal plate, through which the coin does, or does not fall. Cost - pennies for the part, 5 minutes labour to fit.

    For 2, This will either be done by a balancing mechanism, or more likely electronically, so a simple software update is the most probable route. Cost - for the development required probably negligable per device, considering the number of devices, and the manufacturing and labour costs of swapping out a control circuit. One would hope that these have been designed so that they can be updated and re-used.

    For 3, well we already manage to accept 20p and 50p coins, which in case people hadn't noticed are also polygonal, not round.

    I think the figure of £500 to update each parking meter is vastly over-inflated. Given economies of scale, and the labour costs involved in physically updating machines, it's probably closer to £5, if that.

    Edit - A quicki google tells me that modern vending machines also distinguish coins by their magnetic signature, which would appear again to be a software update issue.

    1. No, I will not fix your computer

      Re: Coin recognition

      I suspect the £500 figure includes ISIS detection, which is a whole different bundle of electronic, that said you don't HAVE to use ISIS, you can do it old school.

      1. hplasm
        Joke

        Re: Coin recognition

        ISIS will make the machines more expensive, as each one has to hold a copy of the link-state routing table...

      2. swampdog

        Re: Coin recognition

        How does this iSIS thingy work? It appears to be a closely guarded secret. Whilst that is probably all well & good when only legit places such as banks have the machines but how long is that going to last once out in the wild?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Coin recognition

      "I think the figure of £500 to update each parking meter is vastly over-inflated. Given economies of scale, and the labour costs involved in physically updating machines, it's probably closer to £5, if that."

      Hold on, in the world of PFI and outsourcing there's always two costs - the activity based costing that is the costs incurred by the party that does the deed, and a separate, totally unrelated cost, that is the invoice value to the customer. That cost is what they will record on their accounts payable ledger, and is driven by simply the highest value the supplier can persuade or force the customer to pay.

      Are you arguing that the entropic forces that keep those two costs in separate universes can be overcome, and that the parking meter owners might actually pay something like true activity based cost plus 30% gross margin? If you are, then you're barking.

      What will happen is that councils etc will pony up because they've no choice (other than to rip out parking meters and pay machines), but then they'll use that as an excuse for a vastly above inflation increase in parking charges. And as night follows day, they'll continue wringing their hands complaining that nobody visits their crappy town centre any more, and its all the fault of the out of town supermarkets.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: Coin recognition

        Cost of a label saying 'this machine does not yet accept the new £1 coin'? Pennies.

        The old coins will be around for years - in most cases, the lifetime of the machine. At that time, they can be replaced with updated machines which will accept the new but not the old coin.

        Hundred million my arse.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Coin recognition

          Cost of a label saying 'this machine does not yet accept the new £1 coin'? Pennies.

          Three Pennies?

    3. Martin Budden Silver badge

      Re: Coin recognition

      I would imagine this works by mesauring up to three things:

      1) The size of the coin

      2) The weight

      3) The shape

      ...

      For 3, well we already manage to accept 20p and 50p coins, which in case people hadn't noticed are also polygonal, not round.

      The thing about the 20p and 50p coins is they don't have straight sides, they have curved sides. Very carefully worked out curves: if you measure the diameter of the coin, you always get exactly the same result, no matter what the rotation of the coin.

      The thing about the proposed new dodecagon coin is it has straight sides, which completely buggers up the measurement of the diameter.

  12. Raedwald Bretwalda

    ROI

    So, the members of British Parking Association would have to spend £50m to upgrade their machines, saving themselves £40m per year in fraud. on a little over a year, the upgrade would pay for itself. Thats a bloody good investment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ROI

      Indeed. In fact so good that perhaps they should be paying us for the extra revenue they're going to realise. Or reducing our council tax bills, in the case of the non-parasitic local government members of the BPA.

      1. James Pickett

        Re: ROI

        "the non-parasitic local government members of the BPA"

        Who they?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ROI

      "saving themselves £40m per year in fraud"

      I've found one of the most reliable ways of detecting forged pound coins is to put them in machines - the ones that aren't accepted are almost always forged, although you wouldn't notice on casual handling. And if the machine gives change for notes, the chances are that any forgeries good enough to pass the machine will be paid out as change.

      I don't believe it costs the BPA anything like £40m a year. If it'll pass for real in your hand, and if the machine test indicates it is real, what are the chances they won't be able to bank it?

      1. JohnMurray

        Re: ROI

        It isn't forged coins that piss me off...it's tescos' constant palming me off with 1-euro coins....do they have a separate coin tray for 1-euro coins so they can get rid of them?

        And they wonder why I pay with card for everything ?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Go away

    "Join the debate on our Facebook page."

    NO!

    You have a comments/forum section; use that and piss off with yer "Facepuke" crap.

  14. JimmyPage Silver badge

    Maybe this will incentivise operators

    to stop taking ****ing coins. Maybe I am an odd minority, but because I rarely use cash, I don't have a pocketful of assorted coins available at the drop of a hat. I'm less bothered by vending machines, but parking machines are the worst.

    Big up for RingGo here, who run the parking at my local station (Warwick Parkway) and let you pay by card, via a phone call. And QPark who run the parking at the new QE in Brum. They take cards too. Very helpful when you have to rush your son into A&E at no notice, and have no cash.

    And don't get me started about machines that don't give change - if I ever have any time left on a ticket I always try to give it to a new arrival.

    1. dotdavid

      Re: Maybe this will incentivise operators

      I don't mind the RingGo thing, it's probably a cheap way for parking operators to add card payments with the minimum of hassle. It also allows you to "top up" your parking if you're running late or whatever without having to return to the machine. The transaction fees are annoying though, as is the requirement to speak to someone over the phone or text your registration plate with a carpark identifier code whenever you want to park if you don't want to register with them (or use their app). Still, it beats Pay and Display.

      Our local large town operates a kind of chip coin scheme which is probably the best way I've seen - take a small yellow plastic coin when you enter the car park, stay as long as you like, and insert it into a payment machine (which takes cards) when you return to pay for your parking. The coin's issued timestamp tells the machine how much you owe and you get a certain amount of time to leave the car park after paying. That sort of system means no faffing around with phone numbers, apps or codes and registration and you only pay for the time you use.

      1. JurassicPark

        Re: Maybe this will incentivise operators

        I hope you don't use a car parking app!

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/13/parking_firm_pulls_app_amid_privacy_concerns/

    2. Corinne

      Re: Maybe this will incentivise operators

      "And don't get me started about machines that don't give change - if I ever have any time left on a ticket I always try to give it to a new arrival."

      Doesn't work round my way at the Council car parks - they've all switched over to the ones where you have to put your car registration number into the machine & it's printed onto the ticket. Bearing in mind that to park for anything over 4 hours there currently costs £6.50 (it's £2 or less for under that, not exactly central London out here in the sticks) I think that's a tiny bit stingy.

      Then again, half the machines went through a phase of not liking 50p pieces a while back, and whenever the Treasury slightly reduce the weight of coins - both 10p and 5p are definitely thinner than they used to be, visibly so in the case of 10p - then the parking machines always take weeks or months to catch up.

      And they still don't take £2 coins either (sigh)

    3. JohnMurray

      Re: Maybe this will incentivise operators

      If you look on your ticket you will find it says "non transferable"

      So there...

  15. DaLo

    Risk Management?

    Surely in the risk register of the company designing the coin-collecting machine there was a section about coins changing and how to mitigate this risk.

    It's not as if coins haven't changed many times before, and we already have non-round coins (20p, 50p) and also bi-metallic coins (£2). Therefore it can't have been beyond reason to expect that a machine, during it's lifetime may need to recognise new coins and if it costs £500 to do it then they obviously haven't planned for it very well (or just decided to take the hit).

    In reality it will be many years before the old £1 goes out of circulation after the new one is introduced so the transition period will be quite long.

    However, parking machines in many a car-park can't even give out change even though they can request you fill in your full car reg (oh yeah, one makes them more money, the other stops them losing money).

    1. Sooty

      Re: Risk Management?

      In reality it will be many years before the old £1 goes out of circulation after the new one is introduced so the transition period will be quite long.

      I've been trying to remember how long the 5, 10 and 50p hung around after the "new" ones came out, it didn't feel like too long a time, nor the £20 note. Change tends to end up in shops and machines in bulk and should get swapped out fairly quickly. While they will be around for a long time it shouldn't be too long before they are a novel rarity rather than something generally used.

    2. Martin Budden Silver badge

      Re: Risk Management?

      It's not a risk, it's a business opportunity: it means they get to sell the coin-recognising mechanism twice! Haven't you heard of planned obsolescence?

  16. James Pickett

    It hasn't occurred, then, to the BPA that coins might change from time to time, and to make provision for same? Careless, and their problem.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I agree with the comments below

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > I agree with the comments below

      No, I bet they'll be as lousy as usual. Just wait for that MS fanboi to arrive...

  18. Snivelling Wretch

    The cost of updating a human will be close to zero, so if we do this often enough maybe they'll get rid of those damned self-serve checkout machines...

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Tough Decisions

    On the one hand, the government is telling us it is going to have to keep making 'Tough Decisions' on cutbacks and services and on the other, it does this.

    We're all in this together...

  20. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    Happy

    Alternative solution

    Just get on with it and adopt the Euro. Think of all the money saved by being able to use second hand equipment from the continent!

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Alternative solution

      You really needed the troll icon! It looks like this: --->

  21. jzlondon

    One person's cost is another person's wages. Forcing a £100m spend like this is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly as it's widely distributed.

    1. JimmyPage Silver badge
      FAIL

      @jzlondon

      Except, we know how it will go.

      £100million = £95million on consultancy, advertising, palm-greasing, and "doing business"

      £5million between 5,000 people to work weekends and late nights in all weathers on minimum wage, whilst reading grumbles in the papers about "can't get the staff"

    2. Spleen

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_fallacy

  22. Lazlo Woodbine

    Never mind the cost of upgrading vending machines, who's going to pay for my new trolly token?

    1. JimmyPage Silver badge
      Happy

      Round our way

      Sainsburys give them away free.

      I don't know if they're *supposed* to be free, but when I wanted one, the lady at customer services just pointed at a little bowl that had loads of "Nectar" tokens (with a little keyfob) and said "help yourself".

  23. 27escape
    Unhappy

    New pound coin - Worth less than a thrupenny bit!

    £1 may get you 1/3rd of a pint and somewhere between 1/7th and 1/12th of a cinema ticket

    That's inflation for you

  24. Tom 35

    So how about

    They make the coin the same size and mass so it still works in the machines, but have the two colour and extra tricks so it's hard to make fakes that fool people.

    How much would the machine owners moan then when they keep getting all the fake slugs and can't pass them on to anyone?

  25. Stuart Elliott

    Make the saving by..

    Taking the 1p and 2p out of circulation, get's rid of the offensive 99p rubbish, and gets rid of coins nobody (imo) wants anyway, other than something to throw in the 4.5L Bells Whisky bottles.

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Go

      Re: Make the saving by..

      Bloody good idea, Australia got rid of 1c and 2c coins years ago and nobody misses them.

      Don't expect the 99p thing to go away though, it will just morph into a 95p thing. Which does save you 4p a pop, so that's something.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How exactly does this prevent counterfeiting?

    How many years/decades will the old pound coins still be accepted by vending machines and bartenders? The US has introduced several new generations of $100 bills to fight counterfeiting, but the old bills are still accepted and I still get them back at casinos sometimes when I cash in my chips. I think banks may remove them and trade them to the Fed for new bills and destroy the old ones, but a lot of $100 bills circulate around without ever reaching a bank.

    If I want to counterfeit pound coins, I'll counterfeit the old ones and the new ones will be irrelevant. It will take a long time to remove them from circulation if what I see with the $100 bill is any lesson (and I'm talking about bills really within circulation in the US - the bulk of US currency probably circulates outside the US.

    Likewise, someone counterfeiting $100 bills would obviously target the old style ones from the 80s, give them a nice worn look, and mix them in a stack of $100s when buying chips in the casino to "launder" them. The blackjack dealer just stuffs them down a chute without checking them. Another good way to launder them is to mix them in with bundles of 100s used to make an overseas drug buy. The drug dealer isn't putting that money in the bank, so he probably doesn't "care" too much if they're counterfeit, so long as they'll pass when he's buying whatever drug lords buy with the bales of cash they end up with.

    1. Sooty

      Re: How exactly does this prevent counterfeiting?

      When the £20 note was replaced, the new ones were visually very different and people were given 3 months before the old ones were no longer legal tender and accepted in shops. UK notes tend to be a lot more differentiated than US ones, so you can't really put a few in a stack after they have left general circulation without raising a few eyebrows.

      With these also being clearly, visually, different I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happened and the old ones were given a sharp cutoff. I think only a month's notice is actually required, and should be plenty of time to swap a normal amount over. If you have buckets full of the things it might be harder, but most people don't tend to have more than a few before using notes.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How exactly does this prevent counterfeiting?

        Three months? Wow! Totally different than in the US. AFAIK, they have never made a legal tender note no longer legal tender, they rely on interception/replacement by the Treasury.

        The newer US $100 bills are quite different than the old ones, but everyone is so used to seeing them it wouldn't raise an eyebrow having them in a stack. If I withdraw $1000 from my bank in cash and they give me 10 hundreds, they are rarely all the same type.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    At 90p a Mars bar I suspect that some vending machine owners will ha e more than enough money to do this...

    1. JohnMurray

      Really?

      90p?

      On my rail station a packet of crisps is £1....so is a mars bar......so is a 250ml bottle of filtered tap water!

  28. John Tserkezis

    Cynical Brits might suspect that "lowest possible cost to industry" is a euphemism for "at consumers' expense".

    Nothing cynical about it. Here in Australia, they've converted everything up to $2 into coins, and there was some (perhaps not yet serious) talk of a $5 coin.

    To pay for it, the councils stopped injecting their parking inspectors with the now obsolete Wanker Serum (TM), and started with injections of Cunt Serum (TM)(1). Many councils have also issued new uniforms that if you didn't quite look twice, could be mistaken for standard issue Police uniforms. The parking inspectors for some time are demanding more rights to be protected against locals who are now abusing them, and not just verbally.

    As far as vending machines go, all coin firmware has been upgraded with "Coin Eating Technology" (patent pending), which randomly eats coins and refuses to admit it injested anything. At the same time, huge signs were installed alerting the now hungry or thirsty users to a phone number they can call (without actually promising anything). Then IF you get a successful connection, it'll be a press "1 for this" menuing system that is so convoluted that you'll give up before getting anywhere. Which leads me to the next cost-saving venture - by far fewer phone boxes:

    Public phones are a non-issue. They have all been progressively rolled back (even if you could find one that actually worked). Now that the 60+ population (the last of the die-hards who still used phone boxes), now have their own cell phones - there's no need anymore. Privately-owned-publically-used blue and gold phones have entirely vanished altogether, again for the same reason, and it doesn't help they were always placed outside shops that also sold cheap prepaid cellphone cards and recharge slips.

    So there you go, these are several suggestions on how the recoining costs could be absorbed by the industry(2).

    (1) Term is used entirely in the derogatory sense, and has no bearing of the same word used to describe a particular body part, or any other part of its owner, especially not the owner's mother. Also, the serum is actually fictional, the councils actually use behaviour modification to achieve desired results (sign more fines or you lose your job).

    (2) Rort the customer.

  29. JohnMurray

    Now, about the cost of changing entire banking systems, including atms', over from XP to whatever. By April 8?

  30. DrXym

    I really don't see any problem here at all

    I assume the basic dimensions of the coin will be shortly available meaning any supermarket trolley being made today could be future proofed for 2017 by the simple expedient of providing two slots - some supermarket trolleys take a euro or a pound so it's entirely possible. How long does a trolley last anyway?

    As for vending machines - coins and notes change all the time and most machines are reprogrammable. I don't see how a new coin would pose a problem since the firmware can be updated when the machine is serviced.

    The UK shouldn't find itself in the US situation where their banking and vending machines industries made such terrible assumptions about the size and shape of their currencies that it is virtually impossible to change. Look at the collective hair pulling that goes on over there whenever they try to introduce a dollar coin.

  31. John Savard

    Forty!

    If we avoid counting the faces created by the raised lettering on the obverse and the faces created by the incised microprinting, because that way lies madness, such as counting two faces for each milled grove, then I count 40 faces. 12 sides on the edge of the coin. On each face, there's one face with a hollow center. Inside that, there are 12 sloping facets with the microprinting. Then there's the actual obverse or reverse of the coin. So it's 12 plus two times 12+1+1.

    However, looking at the picture of the coin lying down in the other article, it may have had another 48 faces that I neglected, since the angled faces seem to have vertical faces above and below them in that position.

  32. Blue eyed boy
    Big Brother

    ". . . and contain an iSIS security feature..."

    First steps towards getting RFID into all our currency to stop the VAT-dodging cash-only deals?

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