Summary: <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/thebrendapower" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">Brenda Power</a> is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Power" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">journalist</a> for the Sunday Times and Irish Daily Mail, and whose work has appeared in many other publications, and is frequently heard on broadcast media. <br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="http://blog.hereshow.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Brenda-Power-scaled.jpg" data-wpel-link="internal"></a><br> <br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> Maybe I’m giving away my age if I mention my nostalgia for the pirate radio stations of the 1980s. I’m just about old enough to remember Radio Nova, Q102 and Sunshine Radio, and I know that there were many more of them in Dublin, and dozens more around the country. Some of them were more professional than others and they were run by enthusiasts, sometimes by businessmen, sometimes by shysters.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> It’s hard to believe now, but these were the only alternative on the airwaves to a very dry and dusty RTÉ. Radio 2, as it was then called, was set up to try to stem the massive haemorrhaging of listeners to the pirates, who mostly operated totally openly, giving out their phone numbers and addresses on air, and selling advertising to major businesses. At one point Radio Nova crashed the entire telephone system of the Dublin region when so many people called trying to win a cash prize.<br> <br> <br> <br> RTÉ was so frustrated that the pirates, who were all broadcasting illegally, were taking so much of what they saw as ‘their’ audience that they, RTÉ, resorted to breaking the law themselves and installing illegal transmitters themselves to try to jam the pirate signals.<br> <br> <br> <br> There was a lot of political instability in the 80s, which meant that the various governments had little motivation to offend the huge swathe of voters that listened to them. Then Fianna Fáil formed a majority government in 1987, and by the end of 1988, almost all the pirates were off the air, with the promise of commercial broadcast licences to come.<br> <br> <br> <br> But this isn’t about the pirates, really; if you are interested, go to <a href="https://pirate.ie/archive/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">pirate.ie, a great website that puts up clips of old recordings</a>, and thanks to Brian Greene for permission to use these clips.<br> <br> <br> <br> I was listening to the clips, and when I got over the nostalgia, what really struck me was the prices in the ads. So, for the first time ever on the podcast, let’s have an ad break.<br> <br> <br> <br> This <a href="https://pirate.ie/archive/tony-christie-on-radio-dublin/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">ad is from 1984</a>. Think about that for a moment. A washing machine for £199. I presume that Prize Fighters were promoting their best bargains, but let’s have a look at the bargains today, on the PowerCity website. Washing <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210115125919/https:/powercity.ie/product/62051W" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">machines start at €219</a>, that’s £173 pounds, in ah old money.<br> <br> <br> <br> Get that, after 37 years of inflation a washing machine today costs considerably less than it did in 1984. Other household appliances follow the same pattern. That ad has a fridge freezer for £189, on the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210115130524/https:/powercity.ie/product/7425MLW" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">PowerCity website, as I record, they have a fridge freezer</a> for €199 – the equivalent of £157.<br> <br> <br> <br> Bear in mind that I’m not doing any adjusting for inflation here, there’s no ‘in today’s money’ that’s just the raw price data. That ad from 1984 has an electric cooker £179, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210115130858/https:/powercity.ie/product/P06E1SW" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">there’s some on the PowerCity website today for €219</a>, that’s £172 old Irish pounds.
