FOREIGN CURRENCY SIR,—What the Government policy is behind the ban
on sending foreign currency by post is a complete and irritating mystery to me.
Recently I returned from Canada after serving in the RCAF for three years. When my cheque came from the Canadian Pensions Board it was made out M dollars. On attempting to cash it for Canadian currency I encountered the full weight of the de- lightful British bureaucracy in being told : (a),I was not entitled to be paid in Canadian funds (if I'd lied and told the clerk' I was returning to Canada there would have been no problem); and (b) it is illegal to send foreign currency out of the country by post.
There it is. A debt between two parties, in no way involving the Government's dollar reserves, be- comes nothing but trouble when one of the parties attempts to collect what is his. A small multiplication of such incidents and the Welfare State will have one less tied to its crippling apron strings. As 'it stands, I am three and ninepence poorer as a result of bank charges and vexed at the thought of my many misguided attempts at defending this rather disdainfully regarded country to a likeable race of young men—Canadian airmen=one of whom is wondering, by this time, about the honesty of a certain `Limey.'—Yours faithfully,
26 Belle Vue Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex B. A. THORP
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