Inflation?

[ardcarp]

I've just turned out a load of old papers, and came across a BBC contract dated 1967. It was payment for me to play the organ for a Songs of Praise broadcast (no rehearsal fee, incidentally) and amounted to the princely sum of £7 -17s -6d. There was a promised re-broadcast fee of £3 - 18s - 9d. I don't remember getting that, so presume it was never repeated. Bearing in mind the going rate for a wedding or funeral was 2 guineas in those days, I suppose it wasn't bad.

Has anyone got any recollections of fees or salaries in the sixties? Maybe M.U. rates?

[mangerton]

I've just turned out a load of old papers, and came across a BBC contract dated 1967. It was payment for me to play the organ for a Songs of Praise broadcast (no rehearsal fee, incidentally) and amounted to the princely sum of £7 -17s -6d. There was a promised re-broadcast fee of £3 - 18s - 9d. I don't remember getting that, so presume it was never repeated. Bearing in mind the going rate for a wedding or funeral was 2 guineas in those days, I suppose it wasn't bad.

Has anyone got any recollections of fees or salaries in the sixties? Maybe M.U. rates?

That's seven and a half guineas. All professionals charged or were paid in guineas in those days, I suppose. Does this still go on?

I've no idea about MU rates. I started work the following year. I had a holiday job as a hospital porter. For a 40 hour week and four hours Saturday overtime, I "cleared" £14, though as a student I didn't pay tax. I'm ashamed to say that important items in my budget at that time were beer - 2/- a pint, cigarettes 5/3d for twenty, a fish supper 2/-, an LP 32/-, and petrol, about 5/- a gallon.

Happy days! I suppose the question is how does £7-17-6 compare with the prices I've quoted, in today's terms.

[teamsaint]

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html

[P. G. Tipps]

I started work the following year. I had a holiday job as a hospital porter. For a 40 hour week and four hours Saturday overtime, I "cleared" £14, though as a student I didn't pay tax.

You were very well-paid, mangerton, even for 1968. My first job as a showroom assistant in Glasgow in 1965 rewarded me the princely weekly sum of £8.2s.5d gross, £6.19s.11d nett.These figures are etched in my greedy little financial brain to this day.

I'm ashamed to say that important items in my budget at that time were beer - 2/- a pint, cigarettes 5/3d for twenty, a fish supper 2/-, an LP 32/-, and petrol, about 5/- a gallon.

.

I remember a pint of 'heavy' in the Titwood Bar, Glasgow going for 1s 3d and yes, you're right fish suppers were around 2/-, from memory 1s 10d in my local Italian 'fishie' in Glasgow. (they were all 'Tally' in those days)

It suddenly makes one feel very, very old indeed ...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/b...nged-1900.html

- a fascinating resource. Back in 1984, as a teacher in my Second year in the profession, I very nearly bought my first property - a Studio flat in Leyton for £19,000; using the converter, I see that this sum is worth £58,000 today. Looking at Esatate Agent prices, the cheapest Studio Flat in Leyton that I found was priced at £166,500.

PS: Oops - that price was for retired persons only, under some sort of "Give Us Your Soul, and we'll let you have a flat" scheme. For someone at the age I was back in 1984, the cheapest price of a one-bedroomed flat in Leyton that I can find is - £238,000. £19K was just under 2.5 times my annual salary at that time. To get today's equivalent, someone would need to have a salary of just over £100K. Starting salary for teachers in Outer London is £23,313 pa.

[teamsaint]

- a fascinating resource. Back in 1984, as a teacher in my Second year in the profession, I very nearly bought my first property - a Studio flat in Leyton for £19000; using the converter, I see that this sum is worth £58,000 today. Looking at Esatate Agent prices, the cheapest Studio Flat in Leyton that I found was priced at £166,500.

Interestingly,(to me at least) around 1986 I had access to the pay and contract details of Portsmouth FC footballers.
At that time, pompey were right at the top of the second tier. ( hard to believe , I know). They had on their books some players who had played for England in the not too distant past.

at that time, with win and crowd bonuses, the very top earners were grossing around £40 k. As a junior civil service manager, I was earning £8k, and IIRC, a newly qualified teacher was on about the same.
So a top tier 2 player was probably on equivalent of £120k today.

Around that time I bought my first flat, a 1 bed purpose built in Southsea, for £20k. Reckon that would be around £130k today , perhaps.

[Richard Tarleton]

My Open Exhibition to our oldest university in the mid-60s was worth £40 per year, or £13-6s-8d per term. I see that's now worth £672.33 I seem to remember it paid for my digs in my second and third year. That, plus a full grant from my local authority, with tuition fees paid....

[ardcarp]

Using mangerton's calculator, £10 in 1967 is equivalent to £168 now. Can this be right?
In my student days I could budget on about £7 a week. Luckily I held down a city organist's job which was blessed by loads of weddings and funerals...enabling me to run a motor-bike and later a car. IIRC there was some tax dodge which meant that marrying before the end of the financial year (or was it in the new financial year?) brought loads of advantages to the Happy Couples, so 5 back-to-back weddings were not unusual on Saturdays in April. As for a nice cold snap in Winter...well, less said, etc.

[ardcarp]

a full grant from my local authority, with tuition fees paid

That's a whole new can of worms. DISGRACEFUL that a University education now involves huge debt. My elder two kids went under the old scheme (i.e. free) and my poor third kid and now my g-kids have to mortgage themselves to the hilt. But not so in Scotland...and not so if you choose to study in some EU countries.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I still have my first teacher's payslip from 1973 - I took home £108 in the first month and thought I was very wealthy indeed.. A year later, I bought a modern semi in Chesterfield for £7,300.

[Pulcinella]

I was not yet 18 when I started an apprenticeship on a 1--4--1 thich sandwich course with Rolls Royce, in Derby, in September 1969. I got my Oxford place when I was only 16, when I was already in the third-year sixth, but was advised to delay entry by a year so looked around for something suitable, not having contacts to get me a nice internship, ha ha! (I guess they existed those days but probably not for a Liverpool lad who at that time had not even been to London!)
My take-home (net) pay was £7 8s per week (paid in cash), and I gave my landlady £5 per week, which included all meals, washing etc. Rolls Royce supplemented my LEA grant with a scholarship of £100 per year for my four Oxford years; that's how I was able to build up my collection of records and scores.

[Gordon]

Interesting thread!! I did my degree in Electronic engineering between 1963 and 1967. I had a local authority grant of £100 per term [a fair amount of which was spent in Beaver Radio on Whitechapel in Liverpool] but I also did two summer vac work sessions at a local [to home] steelworks where I was paid the princely sum of £7 a week cash in a brown envelope every week on Thursday in the instrumentation department. Lunch was either in the students union caff [very basic] or a pub a short walk away [past the new Catholic Cathedral in process of being built] where we regularly had a bottle of Jubilee Stout and a pastie for 10 old pence each. I don't remember how much beer was - the local Higsons, not to be recommended! - because I didn't drink too much of it then.

In the summer of !966 I did a 6 week stint at the BBC research department, then at Kingswood Warren near Reigate [now sold off and turned into luxury homes], for which I got £4-4-0 per week, also in cash!! I was fortunate to have digs with a BBC employee for next to nothing. After that I worked in a laundry in S London [Wandsworth] not far from my future in-laws in Wimbledon. Happy days. I have forgotten what they paid me but the education in real life in that laundry was well worth it!!

When I left and went to start work in telecoms in London [Wembley actually] I was paid a salary of £1,100 pa which was a pretty good starting wage for 1967. Both the BBC and the then GPO were paying only £850 to graduates however a few years later the GPO salaries [where I moved in 1972] and those of the BBC had passed the commercial sector largely due to active unions during the inflationary period of the oil crisis of the early 70s.

I left the commercial company after 5 years on £1,750pa and joined the GPO in central London on £2,442!! I still remember those infrequent and shortened crowded trains out of Euston during the power cuts. Two years later I went to some broadcasting labs near Winchester at a salary of £4,400!!! I was lucky to be in the right places for inflation related salary increases. Also lucky to have had a continuous salary related index linked pension which is a rarity nowadays.

[ardcarp]

That's a good troll through the inflation thing Gordon. I envy you the indexed pension. My father-in-law was a civil engineer, working for a River Authority (later The Environment Agency) and after 5 years of retirement his pension was greater than his final salary! We jobbing musicians just plod on........
I feel very cross when pension schemes (e.g. BHS) go belly up. IMO the executives should be screwed for every last penny they've robbed from the pot. Mentioning no names.

[Petrushka]

Despite having a terrific memory for trivia of all kinds I find it impossible to remember what my first salary was or the price of chips in 1967 or whatever. However, I do remember my first salary increase in 1974. It was June 18 and I entered my boss's office to be told my salary was increased to £1815 pa. 'Waterloo' said the boss. 'Yes', I said, 'and today's the anniversary as well'! I think he thought I was taking the mickey or showing him up or something because he gave me one of his looks.

When I was a choirboy in the mid-1960s we used to get £1 for singing at weddings and funerals. A good haul could be had on those Saturdays when we would turn up for four or even, very rarely, five weddings.

[Gordon]

That's a good troll through the inflation thing Gordon. I envy you the indexed pension. My father-in-law was a civil engineer, working for a River Authority (later The Environment Agency) and after 5 years of retirement his pension was greater than his final salary! We jobbing musicians just plod on........

Well I left a few years early [company bought out by new owners] at 56 and so my pension due at 60 was abated somewhat although I'd earned full rights but I made up some of it by consulting for a few years. My fund was a 2/3 salary one unlike some friends in civil service scientist jobs whose fund was 1/2 salary and enforced lump sum. I did take a lump sum, always a good idea in case of the worst happening and my dependents losing out, so after 15 years the pension is nowhere near the salary! Long way to go for me to emulate your FiL but I did get some other income as self employed for 12 years!!

Agreed about pension pots being raided.