On 16/10/2013 15:15, Martin wrote:
On Wed, 16 Oct 2013 14:41:20 +0100, News
wrote:

On 16/10/2013 13:46, Martin wrote:
On Wed, 16 Oct 2013 11:30:21 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

Around £10,000 were stolen from a house
Or should it be
Around £10,000 was stolen from a house.

If you regard the money as individual notes then they "were" stolen but
if you regard it as a single unit of money then it "was" stolen.
It's niggling me.

Do you say ten thousand pounds or ten thousand pound?

were for the former, was for the latter.


I don't think so. In normal speech, the £10,000 is spoken as ten
thousand pounds and the correct (and as Tom said 'verbally 'elegant')
simple past tense would be 'was'.

In the same way, the past participle would be "£10,000 has been stolen",
as opposed to "£10,000 have been stolen".

If a pound was an actual 'thing' it would be different.

A pound is an actual thing. It might not seem much but ... :-)

"10,000
footballs were stolen", rather than "10,000 footballs" was stolen.

Or even 10,00 pounds of footballs were stolen, not was stolen.

As Spider said, it is "[a sum of] £10,000 pounds" that was stolen.

£10,000 pounds without the implicit "a sum of" is plural.

Only in a strict interpretation of what is actually written - English is
often rather ambiguous in native usage with traps for the unwary.

£10,000 [of money] were stolen.

I think you will find both forms in common usage in the UK with a slight
preference for was stolen. Although in certain Lancashire dialects
"were" is used when "was" would be grammatically correct.

It were good. (sic) as an example.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown