I’m getting a bit irritated by the posters everywhere proclaiming Maestro debit cards as “The New Cash”, dismissing cash as being ‘so over’. They say that “The Penny has Dropped” and various other oh-so-witty phrases it took some creatives several days to come up with.
What I want to know is this: does this mean I can use my debit card everywhere I usually use cash? Like pubs, newspaper stalls, or corner shops for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread?
And the answer of course is NO. Cash is not dead, despite it’s many irritations, like frayed pockets, jam jars full of shrapnel, and E Coli.
Many pubs will accept cards these days, but it’s not the case everywhere, and the ones that do are often shiny shitholes like ‘Wetherspoons’ or ‘All Bar One’s. Newspaper stands won’t take cards, although they don’t take much in the way of cash these days either, due to the fact that you can get quality news journalism for free in the shape of London Lite (sic) or theannoyinglytitledalllowercaselondonpaper (although these are quite rare, and you do need to walk around London quite a bit before you can manage to track down a copy).
Cards need technology and electricity to work, much like electronic books, or ‘eBooks’ (isn’t this InterCapping getting annoying as well?). Cash works during power cuts, as do paper books. Neither of them will be ‘over’ for a long time.