Looking at the cafe prices in 1973 doesn't half make me nostalgic for the old days :'(
Cafe price list
- Thread starter onyx(John)
- Start date
Last time I bought a fish supper (fish and chips to the uninitiated) it cost me £6.20.
I was thinking that might be meat pie and chips :-\
I`ve had another look; fish and chips were 25p, steak pies 12p and egg and chips 16p.
If those pies had real steak in them I would be surprised they looked horrible and probably tasted like the budget pies form Tesco all pastry and no meat.The tea was stewed used to go to a café in Leman St in London during the seventies and it was very like Sids but the bacon butty,s were fantastic especialy with some vinegar on them.The big moment of acknowledging the future was when individual fruit pies were put in the cabinet now that was a bold move!
Philosopher Clegg
Dedicated Member
People didn't earn as much back then and the 70's was actually a period of quite high price inflation in the UK, peaking between 20-30% a year. Hard to imagine but relatively speaking the cost of living was probably just as bad back then as it is today for many people. Price inflation is built in to our financial and economic system, it's just that most of the time inflation happens slowly so people don't notice it. Of course they would notice if their take home pay was the same now as in 1973.
http://inflationdata.com/articles/2012/12/14/cost-living-fish-chips/
http://inflationdata.com/articles/2012/12/14/cost-living-fish-chips/
Dennisbn514
Dedicated Member
That is a very interesting link Mr. Philosopher........I learn something new every time i sign on to this forum! And people actually put mayonnaise on fish & chips? I may have to try that.
I first saw mayonnaise on chips in Belgium in 1959 quite shock to a sheltered British schoolboy from N London who did have any idea of this dark art! The 1970,s were hard I can remember money was tight even though I was doing well at my sales job ,mark you petrol was cheaper then but mortgage companies made life hard when you wanted a house loan.Personaly I don't have fond memories of the 70,s and have wiped most memories now thank goodness.
Philosopher Clegg
Dedicated Member
Back in the 1970's the average weekly wage was £26.1 in 1970 rising to £54.0 in 1975. This reflected the high price inflation rates of those times, but also the strong UK trade unions that could demand pay increases that either kept pace with inflation or beat it. Since the financial crisis of 2008 pay has been under pressure with many people not getting a pay increase at all or a below inflation rate increase.
Inflation has been totally neglected by the Bank Of England and Government since then as they have tried to reflate the economy. So, inflation now has been between 2-5%, but if you have had zero pay raise in that time you are clearly far worse off. The UK has weak unions today, so austerity has simply been accepted by many. Ordinary people are simply paying for the crisis brought on by the banking system. There again, the banking system creates all the money, mostly out of thin air.
Back to LOTSW and Ivy's prices. Here's the reason why Compo never had any money and always scrounged off of others. Back in 1970 the unemployment benefit rate was £5 a week. In 1975 it was £8.6 shilling. By 1980 he would have been flush on a little over £18 a week. This doesn't include the housing benefit he would have got for his council house, but there again, council rent would have been a lot lower than the private sector, probably no more than a few pounds a week back in the early 70's.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/02/unemployment-benefit-forty
Philosopher Clegg
Dedicated Member
Interesting your comment about mortgages back then, but I suppose the other way to look at it is that banks and building societies behaved more responsibly. They wouldn't lend to anyone and would rarely lend more than 2-3 times one salary which was usually the man's. Building societies would only lend if it was backed by savings. This more or less changed from the 1980's as the banks were freed up to basically create as much credit, i.e. debt, mortgage or otherwise, as they wanted.
I sometimes wonder who in LOTSW could have afforded to buy a house, an interesting question as they all seemed to have nice homes, even Compo's when Alvin took it over and did it up. I suspect Seymour lived in a family home that had been handed down. Truly probably bought a property when he arrived as he might have had a decent income, savings and then pension from being a career police officer. I doubt whether any of Compo, Clegg, Foggy and Blamire ever earned enough to be able to buy. Compo and Clegg seemed to rent from the council, although the properties were way too big for their needs, they would never have been given a property of that size.
The average UK house price in 1970 was £4900, 1980 £23,500. I suspect in LOTSW country you could have bought an average property for £2-3 grand in the early 1970's, but as the average salary was £26 rising to £54 in 1975 and probably less in that part of the UK it's doubtful that many of them were able to buy, unless Barry could have done them a favour.
amos hames
Dedicated Member
Gone a bit off topic here I think
Philosopher Clegg
Dedicated Member
What is the topic? Seems to me it is the relative cheapness of the prices on the cafe price list board and the mistaken perception we have of that "cheapness" looking at it from today's world of much higher prices. However, they can only be looked at in the context of relative inflation. They probably were not seen as cheap when the series originally went out back in the 1970's. They were probably closer to the average price of such things back then.
I have noticed that the board in later series didn't always have prices on it.
Sorry but keeping off topic we bought our town house in 1998 for £27.500 by 2001 it was worth nearly £90.00!! Today houses around here are going for about £75.00-£80.00 so we're still quids in. I think we were very lucky, this being our first owned home if we had left it another couple of years there is no way would have been able to afford it.