SHY bairns get no sweets, as Grandma used to say. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. She was right. Loyalty is a mug’s game, especially when it comes to money.

This week I spoke up – and saved myself yet another £100.

I’ve always been a rate tart – swapping insurance, banks, savings accounts, phone and electricity suppliers at the hint of a saving. It takes only a few minutes online and over the years, my cheerful lack of loyalty must have saved us thousands of pounds.

Businesses offer all sorts of incentives to new customers ,while those who’ve been with them for years keep paying over the odds. If you’re happy to pay up at the high rate, they’re certainly not going to tell you differently.

Even if you don’t actually swap, just ringing up and asking if there’s a better deal can save you money.

That’s how I was offered £36 a month instead of £45 on my Sky contract.

Rude to ask? These days it’s essential.

But sometimes things slip through the net.

This month I received a nice letter from the AA. “Reap the benefits of your gold membership!” it said, congratulating me on having been with them for 25 years.

More fool me.

To renew my membership after 25 years was £212.

I checked online. For a new member, the cost would be £105.

No, I didn’t think that was fair either.

So much for loyalty.

When I rang and queried it, they immediately gave me the online rate.

Why couldn’t they do that before?

“We don’t put special offers in the post,” said the young man, as if that made any sense at all.

Maybe it does. They obviously assume that most people will just pay up, that we’re all too polite to question it.

Well, forget politeness and remember Grandma. “Shy bairns get no sweets!” And certainly not £100 from the AA.

RICH Russians and Chinese are apparently paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for tutors for their children in order to get them into British public schools, acknowledged as the best in the world.

Education Secretary Michael Gove wants state schools to be as good as the best public schools.

The irony was that many were.

Back in the 1960s – when numbers in private education were at their lowest – many middle-class parents forked out for fees only because their children had failed the 11-Plus. The average independent was still considered second best to a good grammar.

Now the gulf between the two systems has never been wider.

The public school students don’t just dominate the professions and politics, they’re even producing more of our sports champions, actors, models and bands. Even rock’s gone posh.

And everyone’s blaming everyone else for who did what in the past.

The blame game continues.

Michael Gove clearly wants the best for state pupils, but always manages to upset teachers on the way. Teachers blame government for constant changes, endless initiatives and mountains of paperwork.

Parents get the blame for not producing children who will sit still and be taught, or even be toilet-trained by the time they start school. Parents blame the teachers for not making silk purses of their particular sow’s ear. Traditionalists blame modernisers.

Modernisers blame traditionalists.

Everyone blames Ofsted.

Political parties blame each other and even their own side for decisions going back decades.

And everyone tells us it’s better in Finland.

It’s time to shout stop!

For in the middle of it all are our children, more tested and pressured than any generation before them and, whatever they achieve, still being told that compared with the rest of the world, they’re rubbish. What an inspiration.

It’s time to stop the name-calling, forget the past and work together properly, so let’s get on with it.

We are where we are. It’s the only place to start.