markie said:
Is it a tell tail sign that your getting old ( er ) when you go out and ask for a pint , and the bar-person says £3 + ,
Damn, you've discovered the new "old-person-drinking tarriff" whereby older people get charged £3+ for a pint...
Since I started drinking in earnest around 1997, pint prices don't really seem to have changed much... I was paying about £2.20 a pint then, I'm paying about the same now.
Perhaps my drinking locations have moved steadily down-market in those 9 years
I think there may be something in this... I started uni in 1998. I found the beer prices in central London wholly reasonable, as they were identical to the prices I was paying in Surrey, and in some cases CHEAPER!!! However, my new-found friends from such places as Yorkshire, Lancs, Tyneside, Scotland complained at the price of a pint. My peers from the home counties didn't complain, so presumably they were paying similar costs too.
In the last few years, house prices in the north have risen at an astonishing rate from an average of £1.32 and a whippet puppy, to prices that are nearer those in the south. So, it is reasonable to assume that the cost of living has undergone a similar hike. So whilst beer prices seem to have remained static round here (south), they would have appeared to shoot up in places where the beer was cheap before.
