You know there are only actually three different notes in general circulation, right? As it stands the only politician in current or proposed circulation is Winston Churchill, of whome I think you'd struggle to build an argument he wasn't worthy. Other than that, as of now or for the next few years we have a prison reformer (a woman, incidentally, which doesn't seem to have been newsworthy for some reason..), one composer, one scientist, one author, one economist (seems appropriate...) and two engineers - who get half circulation each as they were a team. In terms of the whole of British history, having two women out of eight is actually over-representation. We may prefer it if there were more illustrious women in UK history, but we can't rewrite it to make them so. Personally, I'd happily put Ada Lovelace up for nomination but I wouldn't claim it was some form of discrimination if she didn't make it onto the banknote. There are a hell of a lot of famous people in UK history, and it's just a fact most of them are men.
The UK has a large enough and illustrious enough history that we have a large queue of people of genuine historical significance to put on the currency. Comparatively speaking, you'd struggle to find a UK citizen of ethnic origin whose achieved something on sufficient scale to stand alongside Charles Darwin or William Shakespeare. Not that they don't have the potential for such greatness, it's just than they've only had 60 years or so to do so, whereas the the more indigenous population has had about 1500 years. One day there may be a great British asian (for example) on a banknote once someone of that group does something truly great. Until then, I don't see the justification for putting someone on there just because of the colour of their skin.
