Mannerisms

There's one hand up, over there, the hand of Peter Ayliffe head of Visa Europe, who reckons the UK could be cashless by 2012 thanks to 'wave and pay' cards based on NFC.

It sounds like one of those wonderful bolloxy predictions which the high-tech industry spawns so profusely.

Like the 'paperless office' prediction of the 1970s, the 'cashless society' prediction of last week has a certain logic to it in the sense that you can see how every transaction could be made by NFC, just as you could see, in the 1970s, how the function of every piece of office paper could be done by electronic machines.

But logical we're not. We carbon-based life-forms don't really do logic when it comes to real life.

How about the Black Economy? The nice neighbourhood plumber who pops in to fix a leak, the friendly mechanic in your road who fixes your car, the part-time guy who does a bit of gardening for you, do they want to be paid by NFC?

I don't think so. NFC, like all electronic transmissions, leaves a trail. The whole point of doing the odd little job for cash is that no one ever knows about it. Some things have to stay out of the grasping fingers of HM Treasury.