just found out what it says on the side of pound coins:

DECUS ET TUTAMEN, meaning 'An Ornament and a Safeguard'
Used on British, English and Northern Ireland designs.

NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT, meaning 'No-one provokes me with impunity'
Used on Scottish designs.

PLEIDOL WYF I'M GWLAD, meaning 'True am I to my country',
Used on Welsh designs.

very telling

Telling, indeed, from what I know (not a whole lot). 'An Ornament and a Safeguard' strikes me as kind of unusual and a bit ominous-sounding; is there some historical significance I'm unaware of?

The reverses are: 1983. Ornamental Royal Arms. Edge inscription: DECUS ET TUTAMEN (An ornament and a safeguard - originally on 17th century coins, it refers to the inscribed edge as a protection against the clipping of precious metal). The general version.

From: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/British-coin-One-Pound


Bingley

i found this passage, maybe someone who knows more about Virgil can tell us about the original context

Decus et Tutamen was suggested by the diarist John Evelyn (1620-1706). It is a line from the Roman poem The Aeneid by Virgil (Book V, line 262), though the poem used it in a very different context. Evelyn had seen it on a printed picture frame in a book belonging to Cardinal Richelieu at the Louvre in about 1644. The idea was simply to stop the clipping of coins, which had become rife with the old hammered coins, though these remained in circulation until the mid-1690s. This passage shows just how potent an issue it could be since it cheated everyone and made the King effectively a cheat too.



One cannot without just Indignation, but deplore the unsufferable Abuse of it, by that cursed Race and Swarms of Clippers, and their Associates in Iniquity …For Money being the common Pledge and Pawn between Man and Man, becomes the standard and Measure of the Worth and Value of everything … he that either diminishes it or sophisticates it, does as much as in him lies, make the King as great a Cheat and Impostor as himself … for which no Punishment seems too great to be inflicted…

That now our current Mill’d Moneys have all this while ben less obnoxious to this injurious practice of Clippers, is certainly due to a less degenerate Age, or the Contrivance of the Circumscription about the Tranche or Edge of the thickest Pieces, and Crenelling of the small and thinner, which for ought I know is Modern and its Inventor (who ever he were) worthy the Honor of Medal himself; whether due to Monsieur Blondeau, our Industrious Rawlins, or Symon (Brother to the late squalid Imbosser) Gravers of the Royal Mint to King Charles the First and Second, or improv’d by the Direction of Mr Slingsby, to whom I suggested the Decus et Tutamen out of a Viniet in Cardinal de Richlieu’s ‘[sic] Greek Testament, printed at the Louvre, hindering his intended addition (in Armis) which neither would have become the Impress, nor stood gracefully in the Circle.

John Evelyn, Numismata, London 1697, 224-5

Brother to the late squalid Imbosser Now, there's an intriguing phrase!
the clipping of coins ...And today we have our insurance scammers, etc. I wonder if we (the human race) will ever outgrow the "I'll just take more for myself" mindset... This reminds me of something I heard a few weeks ago, on NPR I think. They had somebody on there who was giving an elementary lesson in economics. He used the illustration of a very small village with a very large village green. Every farmer had a few cows that they all put to graze on the green. They had reached an agreement not to graze the cattle on Sundays, so as to let the grass revitalize. But one farmer started putting his cows out there on Sundays, causing his cattle to be bigger and thus more valuable than the other farmers' cows, while at the same time depleting the supply that was available to the rest of them. I remember thinking that however unlikely this particular scenario was, how very common that type of behavior is. More synchronicity: I just got a PM where the sender wrote, on an unrelated topic: society has to reach some concept of best common interest

how very common that type of behavior is

One interesting figurative way of comparing different social impacts on our global ecosystem is the 'ecological footprint' required to sustain our current way of life. Essentially this measures all the biologically productive land and sea on the planet, allows a 12% provision for other species (generous, ain't we!), and divides this by the teeming millions it has to sustain: this gives an average "earth share" of 1.87 hectares per person. This can be reckoned the maximum footprint allowance without depriving either future generations or those now living in more disadvantaged areas of the world. It does not account for all human impacts on the environment, but it analyses the portion of global resources required to provide food, energy, assimilation of waste, and reabsorption of fossil fuel CO2 by photosynthesis.

The footprint analysis reveals that each person living in Wales requires an earth share of 5.25 hectares. In other words, if all of humanity's millions were to live like consumers in Wales, we would need around 1.8 extra planet Earths to sustain ourselves.

Here are the comparative figures for a few communities that I have been comparing recently:

Overall personal earthshare: 1.87
Welsh consumption: 5.25
Liverpool consumption: 4.15
London consumption: 6.63
UK average: 6.00

oh, and one other (which unfortunately declines to sign up to the Kyoto protocols...):

USA current consumption: 9.60 hectares per person

Never mind, Dubya, we love you anyway. Not. :)


http://www.redefiningprogress.org/programs/sustainabilityindicators/ef/

for USns: 1 hectare = 2.47 acres.

Great link, maverick!

I took the test here:
http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

My total ecological footprint was 8 acres -- what is that in hectares? The average for my area is 24 acres, so I'm an improvement on the norm at least. Still that means we'd need 1.7 planets if everyone lived like me.

Hanging my head in shame,
gift horse

continuing the village theme

check this out http://papertoys.com/ifyouever.htm

props go to oftroy for this link

my footprint was 2.1 global hectares, can't claim this is through anything other than lack of opportunity though.

I haven't taken the test yet, but meanwhile, I thought this converter might be useful for those who don't want to do the math (hi, gift horse! ):

http://www.eddisons.co.uk/property/converter2

Lovely! Thanks dodyskin!

for those who don't want to do the math (hi, gift horse! ):

As someone who rarely wants to do the math, I thank you.