Let's return to the old money.
- Thread starter Cyclopathic
- Start date
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gbb
Squire
- Location
- Peterborough
49p a GALLON of petrol when I started driving.
Green Shield stamps, books of em,
Austin / Morris 1100 / 1300...with obligatory subframe knock
Ahhhh, those were the days
Green Shield stamps, books of em,
Austin / Morris 1100 / 1300...with obligatory subframe knock
Ahhhh, those were the days
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
It was much easier to deal with base 12 and 20 calculations than to go through the faff of converting everything into pennies and back again.
Mercantile arithmetic with imperial units did more for numeracy skills than the decimal system does.
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
Archie_tect
De Skieven Architek... aka Penfold + Horace
- Location
- Northumberland
That was expensive petrol Vern, in 1948.....
Yellow Fang
Legendary Member
- Location
- Reading
I wonder what you could get for a farthing these days. Still, if you tied sterling to the gold standard perhaps it would work. A gold sovereign costs about £220. A sovereign was worth a pound sterling back in the real old days, right? If so, then a farthing would be worth 23p. You could buy a gobstopper with that.
LarryDuff
Guru
- Location
- Hillsborough Co Down
A return to pounds, shillings and pence would be great. It would keep the IT industry in work for years.
Blimey Pete............................. Even I don't remember them.
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
They were quite common, I had a couple as a kid in the 1960s. Never tried to spend them. I had quite a few curios such as sovereign balances, silver threepenny bits mainly the 92.5% silver pre 1920 version though I had a few 50% silver 1920-46 ones along with florins and half crowns of similar vintage and silver content.
I don't know what happened to them I hate to think what they'd be worth now.
Over The Hill
Guru
- Location
- Ridden off into the sunset
I was earning £4 a week mid sixties, when a pint of 'IPA' was 1/5p or a pint of 'Red Barrel' was 1/7p. That's around 15 pints for quid, Hate to think how much 15 pints is in a disco nowlol
Sorry to burst your bubble.
15 pints took you a day and a quarter to earn.
Now even on a basic £8 per hour you will earn £70 in a day and a quarter. My local is on about £3.20 for a pint so you can now get 22 pints instead of 15. for the same amount of work.
I seem to remember everything being very basic and not a vast amount of it.
Even 30 years ago a 23 inch tv was £400 and a video recorder about £500 Now they are half that price and wages are vastly more.
A sob story from a lawyer-
A couple of years ago an old client from the firm I worked for came in. He had sold his house for £200,000 and I quoted him the going rate of £600 to handle the legal side. He gave me a bundle of papers from when he bought the house exactly 20 years earlier which was for £20,000.
In the bundle was the bill from the same law firm for acting in his purchase back then.
£600.
slowmotion
Quite dreadful
- Location
- lost somewhere
I can remember what the pennies, thrupenny bits, sixpences and half crowns looked like but I can't remember what they bought. Decimalisation wasn't all bad however. In 1973 I could buy a packet of twenty Rothmans for 27p and a pint of Adnams for 13p.
I spent quite a lot of time in the college bar.
I spent quite a lot of time in the college bar.
ayceejay
Guru
- Location
- Rural Quebec
A kid in our street couldn't get his head around pennies and ha'pennies even 2 shillings and sixpence vs a half crown and went on size instead. Boy did his pocket money disappear quick.
Accy cyclist
Legendary Member
- Location
- The hills of Accrington
I still use 1970s pounds and ounces,feet and inches and miles not kilometres when cycling. When my daughter was younger she used to mock my constant use of the words record and record player. Now that's it's popular to play vinyl she sees where i was coming from!
Gravity Aided
Legendary Member
- Location
- Land of Lincoln
I do too, because we still have pounds, ounces, feet and inches and the mile. Our local century ride was billed as a metric, because we were just promoting the metric system when it began. And we still have pennies, even though they cost more than a penny to produce. We are in threat of going on the zinc standard.I still use 1970s pounds and ounces,feet and inches and miles not kilometres when cycling. When my daughter was younger she used to mock my constant use of the words record and record player. Now that's it's popular to play vinyl she sees where i was coming from!
Over The Hill
Guru
- Location
- Ridden off into the sunset
I still use 1970s pounds and ounces,feet and inches and miles not kilometres when cycling. When my daughter was younger she used to mock my constant use of the words record and record player. Now that's it's popular to play vinyl she sees where i was coming from!
Why?
I can see the use of miles as everything is still in miles on the road, but everything else is metric.
We started using metric (and being taught it in schools) in 1971 so it really is not even 1970's measurements.
The really annoying thing is part metric part imperial system we have. I went in Wikes for some screws, half the range is in inches and half in metric. I bought some fabric that was sold to me as 2 metres long and 54 inches wide. Can we just move on and accept metric. It is far easier and really a better system.
Is the problem that we have it all tied in with national identity?
If you weigh cooking ingredients in old imperial measurements do you not get fat? Hardly anyone was fat back then. Perhaps measuring in metric is the reason for so much obesity now. I am sure I could show a correlation and get a grant to research it.
