FINDERS KEEPERS: ARE

ANY OF US TRULY HONEST?

 I’ve always believed that honesty is the best policy.

Indeed, statistics suggest that for most of us, it’s the ONLY policy.

But just how honest are we really? If you found a purse containing £60 cash in the street, but with no way of identifying the owner, would you hand it in to the police?

I know I would… because I did. Find £60 and take it to the cop-shop, that is...

I remember reading somewhere that something like 85 per cent of people are honest, in that they would never dream of taking other people’s property. That’s an encouraging statistic amid all the horror tales involving burglars, thieves, handbag snatchers and pickpockets.

And I believe that figure is not far off the mark.

The vast majority of us have no truck with the scum who believe that taking other people’s property is a much better option than working.

And I like to think most people would do what I did when I found that purse near a cinema in the centre of Manchester late one Friday evening.

It was a pretty little purse, probably belonging to a teenager – and inside was a wad of notes amounting to around £60. It didn’t even cross my mind to pocket the money…my only concern was for that poor young girl whose week’s wages had been in that purse.

So I took it to Bootle Street police station, where I was told that if it wasn’t claimed within a certain number of weeks, the money would be mine.

‘’And I can tell you that 80 per cent of cash we get handed in is never claimed,’’ the desk officer told me.

Predictably, I got a phone call some weeks later telling me that, in keeping with the statistics, nobody had claimed the purse and its contents. So would I come and collect it..

But the money was demonstrably NOT mine - it belonged to the person who had dropped the purse. There was no way my  conscience would allow me to have it…so I told the police to give it to one of their charities.

To this day, I don’t know where the money ended up. I also continue to wonder how much pain the loss caused to the purse’s owner…and why she did not go to the police station to see if it had been handed in.

My friends have similar tales to tell. My neighbour June, for example, recalls picking up what seemed to be a five pound note outside her doctor’s surgery in South Wales as she got into her car one day.

When she got home, she discovered it was actually a wad of fivers. She took it back to the surgery, where she discovered that a young man had lost the money – which in fact belonged to his boss.

June’s reward was the knowledge that she reunited the fivers with their rightful owner – while I never did get closure on my .not-so-little find.

So much for our honesty when it comes to the property of other people….but how many of us have never tried to cheat the taxman?

Like giving a plumber the nod when he tells you his repair work will cost £70 plus VAT but he’ll do it for £60 cash?

Let’s be honest, virtually all of us have done it. Yes, all those scrupulously honest people like myself who would not dream of pocketing other people’s property.

In the eyes of the law, wheeler-dealing with the plumber to avoid VAT is far worse than pocketing that tenner you find in the street. Yet we do it despite the fact that deliberately avoiding the payment of tax is not only dishonest, but a serious criminal offence.

Double standards? I prefer to look at it as an honest way of getting my own back on the legalised extortionists who tax me on what I earn, then tax me again when I spend my taxed earnings, and do it a third time when I die.

In other words, they celebrate my demise by completing a hat-trick of robberies and fleecing my children and grandchildren in the process.

.So what would I do if I found a purse containing £60 with a note saying it belonged to a tax inspector?

Easy. I’d use it to pay the plumber

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 28/11/2011

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