The Bank of England has decided that Winston Churchill, Alan Turing, and Jane Austen are too controversial to appear on British banknotes. So they're replacing them with frogs.
I’m not kidding. Frogs. And foxes. And dolphins. And puffins.
The Bank announced it would phase out portraits of historical figures in favor of native wildlife imagery on its next banknote series.
The official explanation was “security,” but we all know better than to believe that.
Writing in The Telegraph earlier this week, Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, said: "The Bank's foremost objective is the security of our banknotes, which includes tackling the threat from counterfeiting."
However, the Savanta research, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, will raise questions about whether the decision was also motivated by concerns that featuring Britain's former wartime prime minister and other national heroes would upset some sections of the public.
The researchers concluded that Churchill, Turing, and Austen were "contentious and not representative of the UK's cultural and natural diversity." Officials received advice to scrap historical figures entirely because they represented "a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy."
Translation: too many white people on the money.
One hundred nineteen focus group participants called the existing banknote figures "potentially divisive, elitist and disconnected from their own experiences." One participant actually described Alan Turing, the man who helped crack the Nazi Enigma code and helped bring an end to World War II, as "imperialistic," complaining about a "'we're the ones who won the Second World War and saved the world' feeling" to the notes.
I guess they missed the memo that Turing was a gay man persecuted by his own government. Apparently, none of that matters if the woke mob has decided he's problematic.
It gets worse. Savanta advised against depicting Georgian and Victorian architecture, flagging those buildings as high risk "due to potential links to colonialism/slavery." The researchers also warned against showing the White Cliffs of Dover because of their "association with the UK border." One focus group participant from Northern Ireland said some British buildings were "erected on the back of slave trade money." Another said the White Cliffs "could be seen by some people to be a political statement, particularly at the moment around immigration and small boats."
Is there anything these woke focus group members aren’t offended by? Seriously, iconic landmarks are out. Celebrated intellectuals are out. War heroes are out. The puffin, however, made the cut.
The Bank claims the Savanta report had nothing to do with its final decision. They point to a public consultation in which 44,000 people participated, with 60% choosing nature imagery and 38% preferring historical figures.
Don’t buy it. The Bank commissioned focus groups specifically to assess whether historical figures were too divisive, so it was likely rigged from the start to justify what they wanted to do in the first place.
"Without great and courageous figures like Churchill and Turing, we may have swastikas on our banknotes today,” Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp said. “We owe them so much and it is right that we should be reminded of our debt to them daily on our banknotes."
Kemp added, “The woke desire to erase Britain's proud and remarkable culture has now even infiltrated the Bank of England. This decision is shameful and should be reversed."
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Robert Jenrick of Reform UK added, "If it wasn't for the likes of Churchill and Turing, we'd be living under a government that really was divisive and imperialistic. The Bank of England should stop wasting time and money on this and focus instead on keeping prices down."
Why should this matter to those of us in the United States? Well, this same nonsense is coming here, and you all know it. The movement to scrub historical figures from public life has already targeted building names and statues, and there have been efforts to update American currency with more diverse figures as well. I’ve long believed that it is inevitable that Democrats will one day push to put Barack Obama on our money.
Give it time, and the demand will be that American money features only figures the far left approves of. Dead white men need not apply.
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