When is a tax not a tax? Simple - when it is a levy. Not my words but a statement from the Department of Trade and Industry.

If your attention was not drawn to it the individual sums are so small that you could be forgiven for not seeing the note on your fuel bill to tell you that you were actually going to be paying an extra £6 per year - £3.60 for your gas and £2.40 for your energy bill.

Peanuts, you may think, and to a certain extent I would agree with you. But it is just one more way in which your cash is being filtered off without any real knowledge of what it is going to be applied to. When you consider the pension rise for the elderly is only 75p a week, you can see why the older generation ought to be concerned at this latest attack on their dwindling income levels.

We are far enough away from Budget day to be able to have a look at a few of the changes which are going to be paid for by that magical 75p. Are you hoping for a holiday this year? If you are going abroad your airport tax has gone up and the tax on your travel insurance has increased from four per cent to 17.5 per cent on Government orders.

The same is true of your domestic insurance bill. Well, let's be frugal and stay at home and have days out in the car. Petrol is now very expensive. Well the tax is - the cost of petrol is a minor consideration - and car insurance premium has risen from four per cent to five.

If you have private medical insurance you will have lost the tax benefit and may find it is now beyond you, so you are now on an NHS waiting list, whereas you could have lightened the load by going privately.

There are so many camouflaged monetary extractions which most of us never really get around to nailing down that this article could be twice as long and still not alert you to the degree of pickpocketing slowly creeping up on you.

And you may be hit with another monetary problem if the banks and post offices continue to close at their present rate. Do you remember when you had your first job and were paid cash weekly? Then you moved up the job ladder a bit and got your first 'salaried' post and moved to monthly payments.

The first few months were tough as you moved from one scheme to the other, but you were young, your parents probably helped out a bit and you managed till the going got easier. I have news for the older generation. You may have to wait several weeks for your pension if you are forced to switch to monthly payments because of the changing system and you will be the one to pay any charges.

The 75p is going to have to work very hard isn't it? And your parents can't help out this time.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.