Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. (From Croydon Guardian)

Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves.

3:23pm Sunday 22nd June 2008 in

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I am not sure I first heard the above saying when I was in the cradle but I am sure I heard it very soon after.

It was one of those much used sayings in the more frugal times of my generation’s younger years.
It was in keeping with the real poverty of pre-war times, through the years of the Second World War, and the hard times which came after that war.

Our “make do and mend” habit and our of “keeping little bits of string” have provided much amusement to those born in more prosperous times.

Reluctantly at my age I am now having to admit to myself that those little bits of string, the boxes of screws, nails, nuts, washers and bolts, collected diligently by dismantling anything we did scrap, (but only after the items were no longer reparable), and sundry other artifacts kept in the loft because they could be used again, ‘in extremis’, will have to go before long.

I might manage to ensure that anything useful in any way will be so used. I doubt that the next generation will have the time or the inclination to do other than “take it to the tip”.

Over a lifetime our frugal ways will have provided us with much satisfaction and saved us more than a pound or two. I would still rather mend an old item than have a new one.

Clothes go only when they are worn out. None of this nonsense of ‘throwing out anything you have not worn for a year. As you age you can shrink into clothes you have not been able to wear for years.

I look on the profligate ways of the younger generations, when they are spending their own money, with pity and hope that they will not fall on hard times in the future.

I get thunderingly angry, or worse, when they waste my money.

My letters published in the Staines Guardian, over the last year or so, document how my money, and other council tax payers money, has been, and is, squandered by my local and county councils.

I put that down to a majority of councillors being well past their prime, and without the wit to realise it, or perhaps knowing they are past it but liking the money too much. If they are of my age, and many look as though they are, they either do not remember the hard times or had a more priveliged childhood than I did.

At a national government level, it is clear beyond question that our politicians take every penny they can get for themselves whilst failing completely and utterly to worry about others.

Completing my wife’s and my own annual tax forms has provided a classic example of the government failing to look after mine and your pennies.

All some elevated civil servant, well paid and pensioned,in the Revenue and Customs Department had to do was to get the design of the envelopes, in which completed forms were to be returned, correct.

It proved too much of a challenge for his intelligence.

The A5 size envelope for one of the forms had an address window which was too small so part of the address could not be seen.

An A4 size envelope was provided for a thin four page form weighing about 25 grams even with the envelope.

This was accompanied by a request that the form should be sent unfolded, because the form would be ‘machine read’.

Presumably another elevated civil servant, well paid and pensioned, in the Revenue and Customs Department, lacked the intelligence to ensure that the design of the form was such that the information to be so read would be located away from the fold line.

That would allow a smaller A5 envelope, hopefully one with a large enough window, to be used. In that way the millions of tax payers returning such forms could use Ordinary Letter Post at a cost of 36p First Class or 27p Second Class. Doing what the Revenue and Customs Department wanted would mean that it would have to go Large Letter Post at a cost of 52p First Class or 42p Second Class. Needless extra cost to the tax-payers,(16p if you use First Class or 15p if you use Second Class). The extra money going as a gift to Royal Mail or whatever it calls itself these days.

Needless to say I folded the edge of the A5 envelope and taped it down to keep the address visible.

I also folded the A4 envelope in half to A5 size, taped the edges, and sent it Ordinary Letter Post.

I had to re-write the address on that envelope correcting the address from ‘Liverpool, Great Britain’, to ‘Liverpool, England’.

My guess is that another, or maybe the same elevated civil servant, aiming to ingratiate himself with his masters, decided that, totally needlessly and after all these many years, that there should be a ‘country’ line in the address. Then he could use ‘Great Britain’ rather than ‘England’ and make his pathetic little contribution to the government's ‘Promote Britain‘ campaign, their feeble attempt to undo the damage done by their devolution policy.