This article is taken from the October 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
The hair sprouting from my ears and nostrils was as bristly as the baleen of a blue whale — and Mrs Ned had had enough. “It’s time you got yourself to one of those Kurdish barbers everyone’s talking about,” she declared.
Later, I found myself at the scruffy end of the high street, tucked up in the chair of a neon-lit salon. Entertainment was a giant TV showing a montage of AI-generated images of tropical beaches and my goateed stylist offering advice on when to trade cryptocurrency and Persian Gulf condominiums.
First came the sweet-smelling hot towels, then the cut-throat razor gliding over the hard-to-reach tufts on my turkey neck, and finally the hot wax lollypops stuffed in my cranial orifices. For the first time since some time before my 40th birthday, hair was growing only where God meant hair to be.
But as I moved to pay using my bank debit card, the awkward response came: “Sorry, we are cash only.” Fumbling for the necessary banknotes, I reflected on the new divide in modern Britain. On the one side, many of us have succumbed to modern digital payment technologies, which are fast rendering physical currency utterly obsolete.
On the other, there is a persistent minority who still inhabit a world of brown envelopes stuffed into back pockets, permanently broken card payment machines and cheeky catchphrases like: “Cash is king!”
The evidence of my own experience is that, after the steep decline in the use of cash during Covid, this shadow economy is once again growing more significant.
In one sense, I don’t blame my barber for seeking to shield his earnings from HMRC. For those growing up in villainous kleptocracies like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Bashar Assad’s Syria, it is a practically moral duty to avoid paying tax.
What is disturbing is the way the more genteel trades are also charging towards the cash economy. I have heard recent tales of wedding florists, high-end kitchen designers and dinner party caterers all seeking payment terms designed to minimise their tax liabilities.
I worry that as we drift inexorably to the point where the Treasury extracts more than half of everything we produce or earn, fiddling the accounts is becoming more socially acceptable.
Now, I don’t like paying more taxes any more than the next person.
But, given no political party has a convincing plan for reducing the size of the state, something radical needs to be done to stem this growing belief that dealing with HMRC is an optional activity.
Doing nothing risks deepening the split between those who shoulder their burden and those who fly under the radar — giving more ammunition to populists who seek to exploit our division.
So, perhaps it is time to abolish cash altogether? There is precedent here.
In 2016, in an attempt to clamp down on “black money”, the Indian Government launched a “demonetisation” plan, which began by calling in old bank notes and developed into a more radical attempt to create a cashless society.
Much has changed in the last decade, so that only the corrupt or the contrarian regularly use cash now
Pictures of chaotic crowds outside bank branches and claims by economists that the policy stifled economic growth have deterred other countries from following the Indian example.
Still, I think it’s time for us in Britain to give demonetisation another go. Much has changed in the past decade. Phone payments, increased contactless limits and idiot-proof apps mean that only the corrupt or the contrarian regularly use cash.
Inevitably there would be resistance from pensioners’ groups. But whilst I know folks who still like to slip a tenner into their grandchildren’s birthday cards, most seniors would adapt with little difficulty.
Removing physical currency would, of course, be no panacea. Serious criminals have many other ways of hiding their nefarious activities. Indeed, my niece told me the drug dealers at a summer festival she attended had been happy to accept ApplePay.
But cancelling cash would be enough to deter many of the more casual tax dodgers — the plumber who asks to be paid “half and half” and the geezer in the pub who proudly displays his Versace bank note clip on the bar counter.
Just as importantly, it will send a message to the rest of us who grumblingly pay our fair share in taxes, that we really are in it together.
Until then, I will continue handing over the notes for my monthly depilation. Hot wax, I have discovered, is both enervating and habit-forming.
