These war heroes deserve to appear on new banknotes

My initial response to the news that the Bank of England wants to redesign our banknotes was to wonder whether Threadneedle Street’s pointy heads had really thought this through.

- JAMES MOORE CHIEF BUSINESS COMMENTATOR

Whatever they come up with is all but guaranteed to offend someone, and that’s before you factor in social media to contend with. The latter is populated by armies of people who spend their lives getting offended. They come from the left, and they come from the right, and history tells us that it is remarkably easy to get on the wrong side of all of them.

Mercifully, such joyless scolds are somewhat out of step with the British public. Large parts of it have a cheerfully irreverent sense of humour, which can also create problems for officials.

Remember Boaty McBoatface? In 2016, the National Environment Research Council decided that it would be a good idea to conduct a public poll to decide the name of its shiny new polar research vessel.

Boaty was one of the ideas, and it rapidly went viral, easily winning the poll. Cue red faces all around and a nasty dilemma. They solved it by choosing to name the vessel after David Attenborough, who is popular with the public, even though his name picked up barely a tenth of the votes Boaty received. The latter’s moniker was given to one of the ship’s subs. A nice compromise, I suppose, but if it had been down to me, Boaty would have been the choice.