HAVING just spent ‘only’ 79p on a popular nougat-filled chocolate bar, I am relieved that the Government has decided against scrapping 1p and 2p coins.

There’s nothing like buying an irregularly priced piece of confectionery to make one realise the importance of smaller denominations of cash my grandma used to call ‘coppers’.

Because one can bet one’s bottom dollar - or pound, or whatever perfectly rounded up piece of currency one likes - that if 1p and 2p coins were abolished, prices would go up rather than down.

I'd be willing to bet the money box full of 1p and 2p coins in our house that my chocolate bar, ‘nougat top and crispy bottom’ and all, would go up to 80p rather than down to 75p.

That’s the way of the world. Businesses large, medium and small would never countenance rounding down when they can round up instead.

But it seems that organisations representing UK society's older and more vulnerable members have spoken up and won the day.

For while cash transactions have plummeted in recent times, there remain a significant percentage of people who still either depend on cash, or prefer to pay in cash.

And for many of them the old saying “take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”, still holds true, particularly with austerity remaining a real and pressing issue for many.

Up and down the land of course, there will be money boxes - or old pickle jars, or containers of every conceivable shape and material - full of, or filling up with, 1p and 2p coins, evidence perhaps that we don’t really use them much at all.

But for those of us who appreciate the filling up of these receptacles, and the pounds that can result in the cashing in, the preservation of our smaller pence is very good news indeed.