Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 December 9

= December 9 =

Money supply (GBP)
How do I find out the value of all Pound sterling in issue? Specifically in digital form and physical (cash) combined, and secondly just the cash figure alone. Can I rightly assume that Gibraltar pounds, Jersey pounds, Guernsey pounds etc would not be included in that metric as they are issued by overseas jurisdictions despite them being essentially pegged at parity with Pound sterling? Many Thanks --Uhooep (talk) 04:11, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Statista, maybe? E.g.:  —2606:A000:4C0C:E200:CCFA:802A:8BDD:BA79 (talk) 06:05, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See Money supply. Only the physical cash is known because the virtual cash, generated in banks and stock markets is for parts Stateless, at best estimated, because the Shadow banking system, tax havens and connected financial constructions and now also the crypto-currencies are beyond the reach of governments by design (and political will). --Kharon (talk) 07:59, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Canadian constitutional amendments, c. 1960
Same church meeting minutes situation as the SCOTUS rulings, but now I'm up to 1961. In one meeting, someone proposes that the church's stated position on Canadian politics be revised "in light of the revisions of the Canadian Constitution"; given the context, it's got to be something religious-related, and I suppose that it's something shortly before the summer of 1961. What could be meant? Constitution Act, 1867 doesn't mention amendments, its sidebar links to Amendments to the Constitution of Canada, which only addresses post-patriation amendments and points me to the Constitution Act, 1867 for pre-1982 amendments. British North America Acts mentions nothing within the last decade of 1961, aside from matters that the church isn't talking about: old age pensions, House of Commons apportionment, and retirement ages for judges. And List of Canadian constitutional documents mentions the BNA Acts and a bunch of repeals (none of which occurred between 1898 and 1970), but that's it. In the meeting, the issue's raised by an American who'd temporarily lived in Canada a quarter century before, so the revisions in question are apparently not some minor thing. Nyttend backup (talk) 18:27, 9 December 2017 (UTC)


 * In Amendments to the Constitution of Canada, you missed the table of Pre-1982 amendments to the Constitution, which shows a Constitution Act, 1960. You can see this here, and I've just corrected the table to show that it amends section 99. Now I have at hand A Consolidation of the Constitution Acts: 1867 to 1982 (ISBN 0-660-60969-X), printed in 1999, which includes footnotes showing the acts as they appeared before each amendment.  From this I see that the amendment just added 99(2) and the cross-reference to it from 99(1), thus imposing an age limit of 75 on superior-court judges.


 * Well, that doesn't seem likely to be at all relevant to religious-related politics, but I can't see any other amendments in the list from 1949 until 1960 that would be either. So I don't know what they're talking about, unless it's something either (a) even less recent, or (b) missing from that table of amendments.  Sections 21 and 22 are about the Senate, the change in 91 was about amending power, 118 was about certain payments from the federal to the provincial governments, 94A is about pensions, and 51 is about the apportionment of House of Commons seats to provinces. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 20:11, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If they were still concerned about SCOTUS decisions, they may have felt that mandatory retirement of senile judges was a good idea. Wymspen (talk) 22:54, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * We were not talking about the US. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 07:32, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually no, it was a different topic; they didn't care about judge retirements. The SCOTUS bit was related to their support for racial integration, regardless of whether it were done by judges or legislatures or executives.  I'm left guessing that the proposer was confused.  Thanks!  Nyttend backup (talk) 01:24, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I went to find a little more data, and I ended up discovering more details: the subject is the Canadian Bill of Rights. The proposal gets referred to a committee, which describes it as a "recently adopted bill of rights appended to the British-North American Act which recognizes that their government acknowledges of the supremacy of God", seemingly a reference to the preamble.  I see that the act today is considered quasi-constitutional, at best; at the time, was it considered to be constitutional, or should I expect that the proposer has misunderstood its import?  Nyttend backup (talk) 01:33, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, that explains it. The Bill of Rights was just an ordinary law, not a constitutional amendment.  A big deal was made of this distinction when the Canadian Charter of Rights was put in the constitution.  Unfortunately, the Notwithstanding Clause vitiates much of the strength of the Charter, and this was not made a big deal of. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 07:32, 10 December 2017 (UTC)