Cheap As Chips?

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I was considering a stroll down the pier today with a poke of chips [fries to the heathen], but the weather was simply not conducive to the idea, being wet, windy and frankly shite. I contented myself with an hour in Relics - I have to be careful not to stand still too long, lest I be considered one of the eponymous objects for sale. I bought four books at the princely sum of 50p apiece: they're winding down the stock prior to moving to new premises across the road. A good time to be buying books, from there at least.

As to the chips/fries, it made me mull over the price difference between now and the last meaningful reference point in history, which for me is just before decimalisation effectively doubled the price of a bag of chips/fries over night. So 1970 is my benchmark year. In that year, the average wage [stupid way of looking at this as always, but nevertheless a benchmark] was £1200/year. This year - 2023 - the average salary stands at £35k, or about 29 times the 1970 figure.

In contrast, the price of a portion of chips/fries in 1970 was 6d, or 2-1/2p: one fortieth of one pound sterling, whichever way you cut it. My [small] portion of chips/fries, that I passed on today due to inclement weather, would have cost me £3.00, and as the quantity served would approximate to around half the portion I would have expected fifty-three years ago, I estimate the increase in the cost to be in the order of 240 times that of the same quantity in 1970. Makes you think...

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