OT Theatre/ballet prices

How does £50 compare to a seat at a sports event such as footy, cricket, rugby, or one of those rackets that are for some reason called festivals? £50 is cheaper than you might think. Also we're paying some hundreds for three sessions for two people at one of the big Snooker tournaments.

In message <shdkil$l6j$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, ARW snipped-for-privacy@blueyonder.co.uk> writes

I'm struggling to envisage you treating the latest apprentice to an evening at the ballet!

I would not dream of going to any such an event.

That's OK then. Non-emergency sprinkler for any of 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 seated in front of you.

IME that's normal for coach trips, bearing in mind that 90% of coach trips wont even have a toilet on the bus

More often than not the sign will say "this toilet should only be used to piss in" (in a more polite way)

I pay around £45 for entrance to motor drag racing but that is a whole day (racing approx 10am to 6pm) and it includes access to pits etc. Accompanied under 14s entrance is free. It's a captive audience for food and drink so prices to match ;(

Well are you suggesting that people are means tested before they are charged, does this mean the people with millions would pay more than the plebs for the same seat, If so then I'd let disabled in free and for that matter younger people. As for unemployed, many people are unemployed through no fault of their own, so maybe a common sense test along with a means test is in order. So we have to live in the real world and I don't care what venues and shows charge people you can afford it or not, if everyone who could not afford it kept away they would go bust.

A lot of disabled seating is actually seats so the person can bring a helper with them. IE a seat for the helper and a space next to it for a wheelchair, or a seat near the front for visually impaired, and the system of Audio Description may also be in place for blind. so running a venue and putting on shows is very expensive anyway. Brian

If they use a wheelchair, they may bring their own seat. I don't know about the theatre, but in many places, the person pushing the chair gets in free.

"I'm gettin' tired o' this!"

My wife and I have been together for over 45 years now (nearly as long as you've been alive Adam).

We went into our marriage with an already-ingrained sense of "look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves". You *had* to look after the pennies, or you didn't have any: nice and simple.

For a short time after University, when I couldn't get a job, I had to go on National Assistance as it was called: ISTR that I received about £4.10s a week.

My wife was a shorthand typist; she didn't get paid much either, to put it mildly.

Then I got a job, which probably trebled our money. We had a small amount of savings, and we easily got a mortgage to buy our first house, in 1978. However the interest rates fluctuated around 5%-9% (is that right? Seems impossible now, but that's what they were.)

Scrimping and saving for 40 years, never buying luxuries, getting almost all our clothes - even now - from the places we always got them: the charity shops (it's a sin to waste anything). Occasionally going mad and buying something _new_ (like a telly, or a carpet, or a bed). *NEVER* subscribing to TV companies like Sky (the people who stole Test Cricket, then sold it back to the fans (a cracking formula, that one, for the robber barons who now run society).

I digress: we have spent our whole lives being careful (I'm from Bradford, Adam). Even our "wealth adviser" at the bank, where we now have most of our savings, has said to us: what are you doing with all this money at your age? You need to stop saving and start spending! (She's in her 30s, bless her.)

We are innately incapable of overspending what money we have. We daren't. We were brought up in the 50s and 60s, in very modest lower middleclass households, and the threat of "something happening" has prevented spending like modern yoof do - in which I include 50-year-olds Adam.

I could go on. And on. And on. A bit like the whingeing, whiny, spoiled, empty-headed, younger masses who (encouraged by our f****ng wonderful Meedja, including, _for god's sake_, the BBC, who will yap on about any story, however much of a lie it is, like dogs barking in the night) now never shut up about "how well-off pensioners are".

IF we are "well-off" (and we ourselves are not, compared to many younger people) it is because we have been very careful with money all our lives: "we know the value of money". And we have never, ever, gone into debt (barring the mortgage)[1]

In short we have bloody well earned the money we have; we have *paid for* the pensions that we have, both in national taxes, and in company schemes. If modern pension schemes are not as good as ours are, that is nothing to do with us.

It's not *us* who are "lucky": it's younger people who are *un*lucky. And you know the old saying: you make your own luck. Not entirely true, of course, but if you budget your life properly, that helps.

I will say this: the world is now run by Marketing. What's incomprehensible to me is that younger people don't seem to see this, and (worse) they seem to swallow it hook, line and sinker, every moment of every day - Real Life doesn't seem to matter any more.

A last little fact: when *I* was a lad (say: in my 50s) OAPs got 1/2 price tickets for stuff, not frigging 2.50 off a 50.00 ticket.

See yer then John

At first I thought that this was advice from Barnsley FC, to fans who had never visited Blackpool FC before.

J.

So did I, and given some of what goes on in Blackpool ...

Owain

Bank clerk questioned me once why they didn't have a signature on file to allow withdrawals on one of my accounts.

I pointed out it was a savings account, not a withdrawings account.

And whenever I go in to pay a credit card bill they offer me another credit card.

Owain

I still walk up to the cinema box office with a jaunty step and say: "Two wrinklies, please!"

I'm not ashamed.

Back in the day when they competed for money, some of the best interest rates were available with ICICI bank

Every year I would need to log on to download my tax certificate to use for my tax return

and every year I would find that my log-in had expired because I hadn't accessed the account within the previous 6 months

I would have to jump through hoops, including talking to a human to reset it and he would explain this rule to me. To which I replied "It's a long term savings account, do you really expect me to log in every few months just to check that my money is still there?"

eventually the message got through and they changed the period to 15 months. By I had got fed up wading through treacle by then.

Sounds about right, but in 1978 in that part of the UK the house would have been well under £10K, so a 9% mortgage rate wasn't a problem and China was only just turning into a cheap manufacturing powerhouse and the microprocessor was only just appearing as toy computers (Acorn Atom). The UK still made a lot of stuff that we no longer do and lots of jobs existed in enormous offices around the country processing bits of paper (tax, bills, licenses, ...)

Plus inflation of 25% and wages chasing prices meant your mortgage repayments were soon reduced even more.

Sorry Andrew - I'm no economist, but that's all wrong. Our first house may well have cost less than 10,000 pounds (can't remember), but our combined income was relative to that price (i.e. tiny).

And inflation of [whatever it actually was] means that everyone is hit, for years. (Have you never lived under inflations?!)

And if you work in the public sector, and inflation is (say) 4%, you might be offered 1%, the next year, and you might collectively settle for 1.5% ... but that process goes on for years and years, so that eventually your original salary is whittled down. (That's why we get often get "numpties" at the top of the public sector nowadays, as opposed to high-class graduates, which was the case in the 70s)

But I agree entirely that we now make nothing in this country, and the scope for jobs is far, far less than it was "in my day". (Or rather: we _seem_ to make nothing). It just seems to be a big stirring pot for _other people's_ money, be they foreign billionaires or other nations owning our infrastructure, and/or international corporations. But Boris and his chums (inc. Blair) are OK, so that's alright.

J.

To get a mortgage your loan must have been a sensible multiple of incomes. It was generally 3 x highest income or 2.5 x highest + lower. In the 80s or it went to 4x income.

I have, and it meant mortgages were a pain for the fist few years and repayments then became trivial.

Maybe, but after the inflationary years, and with pay review panels. your pay would generally overshoot public sector wage increases. In hard times the public sector was protected from deflationary wage pressure. Plus you would have incremental spine point increases, something that didn't happen in the private sector.

We still make things. The mass produced items are made in China and Far East.

Thank you. A very good reply.