{"id":624206,"date":"2026-06-06T09:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624206\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T09:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:58:07","slug":"if-we-must-have-an-animal-on-our-banknotes-it-has-to-be-the-red-squirrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/624206\/","title":{"rendered":"If we must have an animal on our banknotes, it has to be the red squirrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The appearance of a mischievous red squirrel on English notes (they are already starring on Scottish banknotes) could be a vital tool in raising their profile among the public. This in turn could help to kick-start the long-overdue campaign to drive out the greys, whether through trapping, poisoning or judicious contraceptive measures.<\/p>\n<p>The late Marquess of Bath \u2013 he of the ponytail and numerous wifelets \u2013 once came in for an interview on a West Country TV station where I was working and expounded his theory on ways to prevent the poor from starving. He generously handed out bowls of an aromatic stew, redolent of garlic and tomatoes, to everyone in the studio. We sampled it, intrigued. Was it rabbit or perhaps poussin?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou just take a shotgun into the park,\u201d explained Lord Bath, \u201cblast away, then skin and joint \u2018em.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s delicious,\u201d I ventured, \u201cbut what is it?\u201d \u201cOh, grey squirrel of course,\u201d he said airily, as if most members of the lower classes would be in possession of a shotgun and an agreeable park in which to shoot the rodents. In the background, the appalled studio crew tried not to retch too noticeably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The appearance of a mischievous red squirrel on English notes (they are already starring on Scottish banknotes) could&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[3490,5337,4625,14756,50,6884,90,30606,56,54,55,4407,169184],"class_list":["post-624206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bank-of-england","tag-comment","tag-currency","tag-endangered-species","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-science","tag-squirrels","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife","tag-winston-churchill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}