The gentleman from the Bank of England Museum tells me that only the

The gentleman from the Bank of England Museum tells me that only the Chinese have always used it. But they also have 100 halal in a riyal, which also spoils the undecimal effect.Perhaps someone can tell me when decimalisation became common. The Saudis had 20 qursh in a riyal - and Whitaker's Almanac for 1993 (my other reference book) tells me they still do. That distinction belongs to Nigeria, which hung on to pounds, shillings and pence until 1973.My Daily Mail Year Book for 1967 tells me there were 20 dirhams or five riyals in an Iraqi dinar, but the Iraqis blew it by also having 1,000 fils in the dinar. Sadly there aren't any - though Britain was not the last to decimalise.

We can only measure that if there is a comparator - a country that still has a non-decimal currency. But I'm not sure modern business people would accept this as a valid marketing concept.I WAS pondering the sad effects of decimalisation this week and wondering whether it had led to a softening of the national brain. The expression "Sunny Jim" comes straight from the jingle and has made it into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.There is, of course, another possibility - that Force is nice. But I suspect it has become a secret cult, possibly linked to Star Wars ("May the Force be with you") and driven by a folk memory of Sunny Jim.Jim was invented by a New York advertising lady early this century and became a celebrated example of a commercial that was more famous than the product. But, given their age, doesn't that mean sales should be falling, not growing? Maybe grandparents are introducing it to children, he suggests.Perhaps.

He also says 387,926 packets, weighing 145 tonnes, were sold last year - it sounds a lot, but is piffling compared with the big cereals, or even the 3,500 tonnes Force sold in the 1930s.So how is it that a cereal not advertised for 40 years managed to increase sales by 15 per cent last year? "It has a tremendous following from people that remember it," Mr Brown says. He tells me Force is still available at around pounds 1 a packet and that you can buy a Sunny Jim rag doll for pounds 2.99 plus two tokens. It is not the family-owned company it used to be, but is now part of Nestle and General Mills. I was reminded of this when June Hardie, among others, wrote in with this jingle for my advertisement competition: "High o'er the fence leaps Sunny Jim/FORCE is the food that raises him." I had a feeling that Force was still produced and, being a journalist of some assiduity, I was able to confirm this in well under a month. I located Gavin Brown, general manager of AC Fincken which makes Force at Watford. He was a rag doll of some distinction which my parents had obtained by sending a shilling or two and some tokens to Force, the breakfast cereal. When I was small and had no wig, I would comfort myself with Sunny Jim.

If the optimists are right about training, it is conceivable that the last neat housing estate has been built on the banks of the industrial Tyne.. But we can say that, for the moment at least, things look good. The area has some of the UK's highest unemployment, and the uncertainty of marine projects means long-term forecasting is unwise In any case, Geordies are not much given to enthusing. No one yet knows whether the 16 training enterprises set up in the past few years will be sufficient to close the gap: the more successful local industry is at winning orders, though, the more likely there will be a shortfall.You will not find many Geordies enthusing about the local economy. "It has never trained as much as it should because the project nature of its work stops it taking a long-term view," Mr Rodgers says. "There will definitely be a serious shortage of skilled tradesmen." This is not a universal view - Mr Rodgers is more relaxed and points to the efforts to make up the shortfall - but there is cause for concern.The problem is that the shipbuilders stopped training in the 1970s when their business evaporated, and the offshore industry failed to pick up the baton.

"The average age of skilled workers here is 47," says Jan Vonder, project manager at Swan Hunter. As a result A&P managed to increase its workforce from 230 to 1,500 in one month in 1995.However, this pool will gradually drain. While some skilled workers became minicab drivers, most headed out of town - but at the slightest flicker of local work they flood back."When we announced we had a contract, we were inundated with calls from wives saying: 'Can I bring my husband back from Germany or the south coast?'," Mr Johnson says. In the 1960s and 70s, when there was plenty of work building tankers, it was difficult to find anyone who would take a permanent job because they might find a better one next door That flexibility paid off when times got tough. For example "lofting" - building a full scale replica for design purposes - would never be used for a new vessel but could be the best way to solve a complex conversion problem.The flexibility of the local workforce is another strength. "Some of the skills may be out of date but they are what are needed," Mr Johnson says. The North-east still has a huge pool of highly-trained workers who have been through traditional shipbuilding apprenticeships and are therefore well-versed in the old skills that are useful in conversion work.