Yesterday I came across my wage slip for 1973 into 1974.
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| A 70's indulgence |
Trying to find how my £33 compared with average weekly
earnings has proved a tad difficult but according to a series of Parliamentary
questions in Hansard in Octover 1973 in The Minister regretted "that
insufficient information is available from which to calculate national average
wage rates in manufacturing industries” but quoted from a a selection of
trades which had been investigated that the weekly wage for men was £41.50 and
for women came in at £21.*
All of which throws up that observation about dammed statistics,
and which offers up the chance for heaps of people to pile in with their own
research.
Instead, I have turned up the cost of a basket of things in
1973, ranging from a pint of beer at 18½p, milk at 5½p, bread at 11½p and the Daily Mirror coming in at 3p.
I could have added the big items like a black and white TV
£61. 75 or an automatic washing machine [£106] and a Ford Cortina, [£1,075.00].
But these were items we didn’t have. Our black and white telly was rented, our
fridge was a gift.
Now, I am still trying to remember how much the mortgage was
on our two up two down in Ashton-Under-Lyne the cost of which we borrowed from
the Halifax for the princely sum of £4,500.
There will be someone who can do the sums but just not me.
And that is it.
Pictures; lava lamp, 2007, Saltmiser, licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.,
**The Cost of things, https://www.retrowow.co.uk/social_history/70s/cost_1973.php
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