I’ve made some small adjustments to the previous post, based on revision of the amount of food (meat) reasonably consumed in an average week, with some other prices now indicated in brackets to provide additional context beyond the sample grocery list.
This takes the price down to £13 10/6, but that is likely to be a bit lower in many cases on account of:
- Home vegetable gardens/allotments
- A very large number of people keeping chickens for eggs
- Free school dinners providing for five meals a week for the children of many families
By the end of 1973, with further advances in modern farming techniques, there could be a fall towards the £10 mark, even accounting for more meat and fish consumption. With falling power prices and consistently low petrol prices, this is going to further keep the general cost of living under control.
A few other potential/general expenses:
Wedding: £800
Child’s bicycle: £20
Teddy Bear: 12s
New D&D game: £2 5s
Monthly Electricity bill: £5 2/6
British Railways Monthly Season Ticket: £10
Week’s Holiday for 5 at Butlin’s: £49
Week’s Holiday for 2 in Minorca: £125
Mortgage: £87
Week’s Family Holiday for 5 in West Indies: £300
Monthly Mortgage: £16
Year’s School Fees at Eton: £525
Year’s Minor Public School Fees: £240
Income tax for Mr. Average, on the aforementioned annual wage of £2754, is £300 16s, based on a generally lighter individual burden than @.
How? Historically in 1972, the first £2500 was taxed at 25%, with sums over that charged at a quite high rate: (
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/19 ... view=plain )
Excess Rate
The first £500 35%
The next £500 37.5%
The next £1,000 42.5%
The next £1,000 47.5%
The next £1,000 52.5%
The next £2,000 57.5%
The next £2,000 62.5%
The next £2,000 67.5%
The next £3,000 72.5%
The remainder 75%
Dark Earth:
Tax Brackets:
0-£2500: 10%
£2500-£5000: 20%
£5000-£10000: 25%
£10000-£20000: 35%
£20000+: 40%
Thus, Mr Average pays 10% of his first £2500 (£250) and 20% of the other £254 (£50 16s); in @ Britain, he’d be slugged £713 18s.
[However, it important to remember that he would be ‘Mr. Above Average’ in the @ Britain of 1972, where the average adult male weekly income was £36.60, making his tax bill around £475.75; the different prices and inflation also play merry heck with the situation.]
(A Bit on Tax
There has been discussion, by all three major parties, for the introduction of a tax free threshold for low income earners and movement on this is expected during the life of the new Parliament. As a general observation, as in many progressive tax systems, the large majority of the overall income tax ‘take’ comes from the highest brackets; in DE 1972, income tax is equivalent to 11% of the British GDP of £241,554,419,577. Of the labour force of ~79.5 million, the most tax from a group doesn’t come from the low income earners or Mr Average, but from the millionaires and indeed from those in ‘Very Wealthy’ category who earn above £100,000 a year (equivalent to $4.255 million 2024 USD, FWIW)).
He also pays £68 17s in National Insurance, for a total individual tax burden of £369 12s; VAT is incorporated into the cost of goods, along with excise, so our friend doesn’t need to do any calculations on that.
Shifting back onto food, the nominal amount that can be purchased for a lower percentage of an average male wage is substantively higher (Factoring in that ~42% of all adult women are also in the workforce and earn ~60% of the average male wage, total family income for some is even higher) and most often of a better quality.
Broadly speaking, there are far fewer processed foodstuffs, a greater proportion and availability of fresh fruit and vegetables, less snacking and availability of what we would term convenience food and virtually no ‘ready meals’.
Notes on Food from c. 1968
In Britain, food and drink standards haven't undergone the same degree of decline due to the World Wars and rationing as in @ and the culinary situation and tastes are quite Edwardian, with some differences. One is the preference for English rather than French names and labelling that grew out of traditional rivalries. The general diet of the working classes has greatly improved and there is increasing diversity of food stuffs from around the Empire and world.
- The combination of Imperial/Commonwealth food politics and domestic agricultural policy means there is quite a lot of produce available at steady prices.
- The lack of the impact of postwar austerity and rationing has meant there wasn’t the same drop off in relative quality and standards of cuisine.
- In general, there is more and better fruits and vegetables available; and more meat is consumed on a per capital basis.
- Milk and dairy consumption is quite high.
- Changes in migration patterns have meant that Indian and Chinese restaurants are still confined to the largest cities, rather than starting to spread out. The historical British culinary interest in curry has just started to really take off at this point, but here is somewhat muted and comes in the form of more Anglo-Indian adaptions: rather than a butter chicken and rice, one would find a beef curry with vegetables, onions and curry powder served with mashed potatoes.
- When Indian restaurants start to spread, they will have a much more esteemed position/cultural cachet, as well as serving some of the more elaborate dishes.
- Persian restaurants have started to spread around the great international cities in a much heavier way and more distinctly.
- Likewise, a somewhat different style of West Indian/Caribbean cooking is diffusing internationally, combining the Caribbean elements of @ with the different Anglo-Cuban evolution of that cuisine.
- Some wartime nastiness with Italy did cause some damage to the number of Italian restaurants, cafes, ice cream sellers and so forth that began to increase from the 1950s in @. Pasta is largely unknown, saved for tinned spaghetti and macaroni, and pizza is an alien foreign delicacy.
- Fewer Berni Inns as of 1968 (as compared to 1970), but other steakhouses, chophouses and carveries are a bit more common, with higher standard fare and larger portions. Their identity and style is deliberately very stereotypically British (read John Bull and The Roast Beef of Olde England) as a result of cultural differentiation and subtle government encouragement.
- Continued Ministry of Food run British Restaurants provide set menus cheaply, both as an aid to public nutrition and as a skeleton/cadre structure for expansion into wartime/crisis public feeding.
- Beyond some limited London restaurants and some places near larger US bases, the hamburger is yet to take off. There was no Wimpy’s franchise opening by Lyons in 1954.
- The major British ‘fast food’ is fish and chips, followed by meat pies and various types of roast/corned meat sandwiches.
- Pub opening and closing times were regulated to a slightly reduced degree during each world war and quickly reverted to the pre 1915 norm in 1919 and 1946 respectively, which allowed for opening between 0900 and midnight, with many city pubs and those near large factories/shipyards/armaments works having licences to open beyond and outside the norm.
- Off licences by and large don’t exist in the same broad fashion.
- No pubs are permitted to open on Sundays.
- Fish consumption is high, driven by supply and MoF encouragement, which in turn is motivated by the multiple uses/strategic value of the fishing fleet. Fish on Friday is a widely followed tradition on cultural grounds.
- There is no dearth of flavour, as some commentators have pejoratively ascribed to British food of the 1960s in @, which comes from the base quality and natural tastes of the foodstuffs, use of quite a lot of traditional herbs, no decline in the medieval/early modern English popularity of garlic and some rather special new inventions.
- These are a combination of @ spices, flavoured salts, MSG and equivalents and a bit of a fantastical Willy Wonka approach; think what Heston Blumenthal and his ilk could accomplish with real culinary magic.
- The other major food related areas where magic has played a role are storage/preservation (a subsection of which is military rations) and cooking devices. There are ovens that can roast a 25lb turkey to perfection in half an hour, cook 12 dishes differently and simultaneously and other such ‘marvels’. Frozen meals can be heated quickly with a fair bit better quality.
- More venison is generally available and mutton and veal retain their respective niches.
- Chip pans have been replaced by safer household deep fryers.
- Beer is served at 36 degrees Fahrenheit which, due to some magically assisted developments over the centuries, results in no loss of flavour profile, which is a bit richer, due to continued use of gruyt herbs as well as hops.
- Dwarven ale is stronger (16-25%), richer in taste and through some secret process, contains a fair whack of the necessary calories, vitamins and minerals needed for nominal survival, although not the lot.
- The halflings population is quite ‘food centric’ and provides many of the great cooks of England, as well as instructors at military culinary schools.
- French cuisine has less of a cachet/hold over the popular imagination as the epitome of food excellence. One of the unfortunate byproducts, from an external universe perspectives, of greater prosperity has been the lack of a breakthrough for Mediterranean cuisine as achieved by Elizabeth David in @
- School dinners/lunches are still provided in the majority of institutions, along with free orange juice and milk.
- More wine is made in southern England and Lyonesse, but perhaps half of it is grape wine and the rest is various forms of fruit wine.
- Television chefs have made earlier inroads, with Julia Child, Graham Kerr, Fanny Craddock, Delia Smith (five years before @) and James Beard all making inroads. Keith Floyd will be joining their ranks sooner as one of my rare personal taste inserts, as I enjoy him a great deal.
- Martian and Venusian dishes are really out of this world.
- As a general rule, whether in the USA, Britain, Europe or the wider world, that golden moment of regional cuisines/styles combined with modern tech and capacity has extended a little longer.
