Pligget

No excuses. You know how it is - just not particularly moved to write anything in particular, and then I realise it's months since my last post.

Then, as the time-gap gets bigger, the "significance" of the next post increases exponentially and I don't know what to write to "re-launch" things.

Anyway, I've given all that bollocks up and I'm going to start by writing a typical example of the usual inane stuff you've come to know and ignore in your thousands. In fact, the following piece is so trivial that it serves my purpose perfectly...

In for a penny

I heard a thing on the radio this morning about whether or not it's time to abolish the 1p coin. It's apparently worth less than the halfpenny was when that was removed from circulation in 1984, and its main function these days is to keep plumbers busy unblocking washing machine outlet pipes.

Apparently one of the popular concerns of losing the penny is that it would result in inflation, since every price would be rounded up by scurrilous shopkeepers to the nearest even number of pence. I think the opposite is true. Most of the things we buy have prices of the type ?9p or £??.99. No shopkeeper's going to want to round a price up from £9.99 to £10, so they'd be more likely to drop it to £9.98. Either that or (more likely) they'd keep the prices the same and, if you were paying cash, they'd let you off the odd penny on the total, or give you 1p more in change if necessary. They'd be happy to do that if it meant not having to deal with tens of kilos of almost worthless and difficult-to-handle small bits of metal.

In fact I'd be all for abolishing the 2p piece too. They're just as unnecessarily bulky as the 1p (and they might force prices down to £?.95).

In any case, so few transactions are cash these days, and, even in those, if everyone adopted a system where prices were still set to the nearest penny, and the transaction total was rounded up or down to the nearest 5p, no-one would lose out in the long-run. That way we wouldn't have to carry around those bulky bronze coins that no slot machine accepts any more anyway.

Wow - you wouldn't believe such a subversive, Earth-shatteringly significant article could be penned by someone who hasn't lifted his quill in months. I can hear the call from the Pulitzer committee coming through now.

Hello! It's me again