Sorry I know you didn't mention WordPress it was just a general post not directed at you m8.
>>>I can understand coders wanting to produce the perfect code but most people don't give a toss. <<<<
Isn't that the truth, however there are reasons to start going forward.
1) Perfecting the code/speed is important for conversions, its been proven that if a site takes more than 2-3 seconds to load many visitors click the back button before the page has loaded, so you are actively losing customers. This isn’t a problem when on a broadband connected device but when you’re out and about on 3G that's when you see what a problem this is, especially if you have paid Google ads for that click! You can read some case studies about this here
http://www.icrossing.co.uk/slow-pages-lose-users2) There is also another update coming you guys should consider, Google is testing a red icon that says "slow" next to sites in its index that aren't up to standard, will people still click on your site if your site has this icon next to it?
>>>Some friends have a site that was done in tables with Microsoft Frontpage years ago. It ranks for lord knows how many keywords natinally and brings in about £ 700 a day I believe. When it was put through those validators there were on average, about 150 code errors on each page.<<<
Yes I have seen these sites as well, 2015 is the year you will see these sites vanish. Google wants to give their users the BEST user experience possible and only direct them to sites that provide that best user experience, since more users are now using phones on the go (3-4G) than the old days of PCS they want to rank the fastest/best user experience sites first, sites that have made the effort to ensure their users, (essentially Google's) users get the very best "user experience".
If your website is used as an extension to your leaflet campaign you have nothing to worry about, if your website is used as a marketing platform via Google and you rely on any organic traffic you will have problems with all the emphasis on speed and user experience coming down the pipeline.
There are a lot of dodgy page speed tests out there, im not sure I would rely on any speed test other than Googles own test tool. if you want to know if your going to have problems with google rankings in the future always use their test tool to see exactly what THEY think of your website and you cant go wrong.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/