Right, let's talk money. As you have undoubtedly noticed, new design £10 banknotes came into circulation this month. They feature a portrait of the naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin and they carry a number of anti-counterfeiting features, or so hopes the Bank of England, the police and anyone who might get stuck with dud notes. The £20 note introduced last year had similar features and the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) tells me that it is working well. They haven't picked up a single forgery of the 1999 £20 note. In fact, forgeries are down overall. In 1997 £9.4m duds were taken out of circulation. In 1998 this was down to £6.8m and last year only £3.5m forgeries were uncovered -- peanuts in the great money-go-round scheme of things. The growing use of plastic, of course, has a lot to do with this, but as the NCIS spokeswoman pointed out, it just isn't fashionable to do forgeries these days (I suppose the up-to-date crims are all dot.conning' away on a tangle of web sites). It is also very expensive to print your own money. Today's notes are printed on costly lithographic machines so the forgers are more likely to creep back to work after hours for a spot of moonlighting rather than cranking out crude, fool-no-one copies in their garages. Unfortunately, if any forged notes find their way into your till, you will not be compensated for doing the law abiding thing. Your customers won't appreciate your trying to recirculate any duds, so clearly it is best to be able to spot them before they become your property. {{GROCER CLUB }}