2011 50p coin celebrates World Wildlife Fund 50th Anniversary

[chrisild]

I see a lot of coins, like the €2 commemoratives are just plain boring, not well done and do not look interesting. But i think this is different!

Hmm, some British commems are dull, others are attractive. In my opinion that also applies to €2 commems, US quarters, Polish 2 zl commems etc. as well - have not found any where I would say the entire series is plain boring. But that is just my opinion of course. This 50 pence coin I still need to get used to.

Interesting way of raising money.

The WFP (World Food Program) HQ in Rome did the same thing with a €2 commem in 2004 - they sold a small portion of the total mintage in surcharged coin cards. The extra money that a collector paid was basically a donation to the WFP. Sounds good to me, as long as I have a choice. And apparently this also applies to the 50p WWF coin ...

Christian

[andyg]

Hmm, with the abbreviation "WWF", the first two W's usually mean "World Wide". Maybe that's why ...

Christian

Possibly - but it's a British coin nevertheless.
Maybe the royal mint read this forum anyway because their latest email says,
"the silver Proof version of the coin has been pictured with the Monarch Butterfly. Taken at a Butterfly house in Stratford Upon Avon"
but neglects to say why this was chosen

There is a clickable 50p here I found amusing.

ps. Fosseway, is that the end of the M3 in the car picture?

[chrisild]

Hey, that is a nicely done animation, thanks! Finally I can find out what all those animals and other symbols are.

Christian

[FosseWay]

ps. Fosseway, is that the end of the M3 in the car picture?

Hmm, not sure. Not my part of England and TBH motorways all look like each other (yes, I know, heresy from a Sabristo). The text attached to the car on the interactive coin would give some of the petrolheads on SABRE a seizure though  .

[Figleaf]

Some other texts , well, why they didn't exactly give me a seizure, they had me shaking my head. It's a collection of true believer stories and old hat dogma's. I didn't look at all the texts, but here aretwo examples.

The cork forests in Portugal are not an example of good land use. Cork is being replaced by artificial cork that doesn't spoil your wine when it feels like it. The Portuguese government had already decided to have the forests chopped when activists stopped them. Today, the cork forests are a pretty useless monoculture, though it is hoped that they will become a tourist attraction.

Windmills are at best a very partial solution for carbon-based energy. At present, the technology would require unimaginably huge parks of mills to make a difference. This while resistance to windmills is increasing: people complain they spoil the view (of defecating cattle?) and the greenies are against them because birdies insist on flying into windmills. Nuclear energy is the only viable alternative, but it is completely politically incorrect to say that, especially today.

I guess the WWLF didn't want to confuse the seething masses.

Peter

[FosseWay]

I have two beefs (beeves?) with artificial corks. Firstly, they're more or less impossible to get back into the bottle. Secondly, when you've finished the bottle the only viable option is to put the 'cork' in the landfill bin. It can't be recycled and I've yet to figure out a household use for them. Real corks, on the other hand, I cut up and put in the compost along with all the other non-meat food waste. And even if I did put them in the bin, they'd rot at the landfill site, or wouldn't give of toxic fumes if burnt, unlike their plastic equivalents.

Wind energy: I tend to agree, Peter. The UK has a particular fascination for this method of generation, to the virtual exclusion of other renewables. Wind generation isn't useless, especially with our weather, but all our eggs should not be in one basket. We get plenty of rain for hydro and sun for solar, too, not to mention all that sea that goes up and down twice a day.

Nuclear: Again I agree. As far as I'm concerned the only way to meet the shortfall between the end of fossil and the dawn of a truly renewable age is to use nuclear. And recent events in Japan have actually won some converts to nuclear, too, including George Monbiot of all people. His argument is that if a 40-year-old reactor that was designed for an impact getting on for 10 times smaller than the one that hit it can survive intact enough not to seriously irradiate the surrounding area, then modern ones with more safety measures should be even more secure. Yes, there are risks to nuclear, but I'm not convinced they're worse than those attached to other forms of generation. The difference in the public mind is that they can see the cause and effect between a mine roof fall and miners dying, or even between rising sea levels and increased flooding, but the only word that follows 'nuclear' in their lexicon is 'bomb', and the risks are therefore blown out of proportion.

[andyg]

Watch out for this one in your change.....