I see you point Robin but on the other hand surely today's modern fuels shouldn't be full of the cr@p they were years ago and tanks are plastic now so dont corrode.
....Yes, old habits die hard!
I'm fairly sure that I've seen it mentioned for nowadays too though.
I look at this the other way round, by constantly running it down low your not getting a build up of cr&p in the bottom of the tank and therefore have no worries about running out of fuel and actually only having about 3/4 of a tank that us "useable".
I replaced the fuel filter on my GTI at around 50k miles and it was fine. Its a cheap and relatively easy job to do, also.
Ive run every car ive ever owned (even 100k + Peugeot diesels) like this and never had a problem.
Modern fuels are much much cleaner than fuels of old and cars have better filters than they used to, so there is much less chance of clogging up your motor.