Dear LPG,

Readers may remember all that speculation about getting rid of 1p and 2p coins back in mid-March this year.  It occurs to me that everything the government thinks of doing is designed to save them money, and one of the saddest aspects of this is that they pay people loads of our money to work out ways of making sure that they save even more at our expense.

Back in the 199o’s I can remember when the practice of selling things for 1p less became standard and the consumer was conned into thinking that something costing 99p appeared so much cheaper than when you had to pay £1.00 for it. 

When, in 2001 the first 99p shops started to appear on our High Streets we all looked down on them somewhat, but that stigma soon disappeared and I am sure that just a few years later, when there were low cost shops  all over the place, many of us would try a 99p shop before the £1.00 shop.  I think that this is because, in the light of all the austerity the average man in the UK street has been forced to suffer over the past decade, and in spite of what the TV adverts would tell us,  pennies do count a lot for a lot of people. 

Think of all the times you pay the odd 99p for items that you buy at the moment and how much extra you would end up losing if the government withdrew your ability to do so.  I have read that their reason is the cost of producing the coins.  So the retailers would benefit, the government would benefit and the consumer would lose yet again; we would pay out £s more each month when we shell out that extra penny on so many items.

It is annoyingly funny that every time the establishment introduce a new idea the consumers lose out.  We were persuaded to buy more by paying a penny less 15 years ago and now they want to take that away from us when times are financially tight.

When I was a child I was told to ‘look after the pennies so that the pounds could take care of themselves’.  If there are no pennies will we have anything left?

NU, Catford

LPG found a little relevant information

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