Veneer of frivolity in Britain

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33625, 29 August 1974, Page 13

Veneer of frivolity in Britain

(By

JAMES RESTON

of the "New York Times,” through N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, August 28.

The rate of inflation in Britain is now almost double that of America, and the chances are that things will get worse before they get desperate; so the British people are coming up with some ingenious ways to live through the crisis, and even beat it.

The “Economist” magazine suggests, not very helpfully: Don’t just sit there — build an ark. Don’t count on the politicians — they are going to fight an election in October on issues which have no relevance to the problems ahead. The London Business School, in an economic forecast by Professors James Ball and Terence Burns, tells the people not to imagine that the present crisis will go away. The professors foresee consumer prices rising another 20 per cent in 1975, and predict that there will be

one million unemployed in Britain the winter after next.

The ordinary people, at the suggestion of the “Sunday Times,” have some remedies of their own. Mr Richard Dawson, of Brighton, for instance. suggests that friendly neighbours should form fourfamily urban communes. What they could not afford separately, at present prices, he thinks, thev might be able to afford together: they don’t need four cars and four television sets, he says, so let them sell two of each and share the rest; keep one lawnmower, and one set of tools; dig two of the four back gardens for vegetables; buy a deep freeze; organise a car pool; and make home brew.

Mr Donald Rayfield, of Baughurst. suggests, keep your eye on the largest items such as cars, housing, food, holidays, clothes, and vices. He estimates that a £l2OO car costs £7OO a year to run. “Sell it,” he advises, “and buy a sound banger for £l5O, and cut your running costs by buying spares from the breakers.”

On housing, buy, don’t rent, he insists. Mortgage interest still lags behind inflation. Look for something oldfashioned or decrepit in an immigrant or working-class

neighbourhood of London with wide steets and some trees, or find outside London “a house just vacated by an old lady and 17 cats.” Mr Rayfield is also a home garden and home brew man. Stay out of restaurants, he advises; grow dwarf runner beans, alicante tomatoes, raspberries, and red and black currants. And. as for vices, he says: “Cut out spirits, brew good, cheap beer in the washing machine, and turn the black currants into wine. If you gamble, don’t place bets—take them. If you smoke, grow your own tobacco.”

Church jumble sales and charity shops are the answer to the clothes problem, Mr Ray insists, “particularly if you have children or an unknowing husband, or a frumpy wife.” Mr Harry Alexander, wrote to the "Sunday Times” that he spent two afternoons a week knocking on doors and offering to buy anything made of gold, and was surprised at how well he had done, particularly by soliciting undertakers.

Mr C. D. Musson, of Barracombe, thought that buying second-hand furniture, and particularly sturdy antiques, was the answer to the inflation problem; and Mr Philip Thomas, of London, had a

more original, if not quite ethical, suggestion: buy a little John Bull printing outfit, he proposed, and print yourself some letter-heads. Then, if you need tyres for your car, you produce a printed letter-head of your imaginary garage, and get the tyres wholesale, or if you need paint or building materials, turn yourself into a bogus builder and save 15 to 20 per cent on retail prices.

“If you need to borrow money,” Mr Musson says, "and you’re looney if you don’t, try to borrow it from your employer. Offer him a deal that benefits you both. If you’re giving him 12 per cent this is probably better, than he’s getting from the bank and certainly 4 per cent cheaper than you’d have to pay.” All this may sound a little frivolous, but it’s not quite as nutty as it sounds. The make-do-and-mend attitudes of the British austerity days are being discussed, if not practised, and people are talking again about social conflict and the class war.

Sample family budgets in the “Economist” show that since last March, when the Labour Party returned to power—if that is the right word, the average factoryworker has lost 2j per cent in real income; a middle-class manager with a wife working part-time has lost 6| per cent: and those with £5OOO a year or more, a drop of more than 10 per cent.

"As real incomes fall.” the “Economist” observes, “trade unionists will, understandably, try to insist that the whole burden should fall on the non-unionised middle class. They will emphasise this insistence by demanding even bigger wage rises, backed by strikes . . .

“If the average drop in income reaches 10 per cent, nobody can tell what social conflict will result. There are even a couple of Colonel Blimps loose in this island trying to mobilise the populace to keep essential services running if a general strike occurs, and getting more publicity than they deserve. “The outlook is not for violence, but it is for more austerity, not on the scale of the early post-war years, but hard enough to make people think about crazy schemes to keep afloat.”