Cashless Society? No Thanks

Being naturally averse to queuing - even for The Ladder - I would, or should, welcome anything that speeds up the protracted business of paying for goods in a shop. As we know, the news that items purchased have to be paid for comes as a total surprise to many a shopper, prompting much digging in pockets, purses, handbags, wallets, etc. Then comes either the protracted counting out of the right money or the right change, or the protracted business of slotting the card into the machine, keying in the pin, waiting for the connection, etc, etc, I'm getting fidgety even writing about it...
So, would the much-vaunted cashless society (widely predicted by parties with an obvious vested interest) be better? Obviously not with the present card technology, which tends to be even slower than cash, but with the various new methods of instant electronic payment, via ultrasmart cards, mobiles, thumbprints, voice recognition, whatever, that are being talked of - surely that would be a good thing, woudn't it? Well yes, inasmuchas it shortens my queuing time and lowers my blood pressure - but a firm No in view of the wider implications. Any form of cashless transaction leaves an electronic trail, which can be followed by anyone with the means, i.e. in practice, and in prospect, agencies of the state or others parasitic on those agencies' resources. It is like the also much-vaunted Oyster card in London, a fine cashless system of paying for your journeys - but also a means of tracing your movements around the capital. This may have given us a lot of harmless fun following the blameless Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler's eccentric journey home after that Irish Embassy Christmas party - but the principle is just plain wrong, and so it is with universal cashless payments. Paying by cash is one of the few areas of unmonitored autonomy left to us. Let's keep it that way.