{"id":60289,"date":"2021-11-05T06:46:21","date_gmt":"2021-11-05T11:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60289"},"modified":"2021-11-05T06:46:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T11:46:21","slug":"a-red-light-on-the-dashboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60289","title":{"rendered":"A red light on the dashboard"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A red light on the dashboard<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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On New Year\u2019s Eve 2006-7, something unexpected happened.\u00a0 For most of the previous two decades, most of the pubs where I live had operated a system where they gave tickets to regular drinkers in order to limit the number of people seeking entry.\u00a0 This was a problem because one couldn\u2019t secure tickets for guests.\u00a0 And since my relatives only stayed over for the holidays, it left us to seek out the few pubs that did not operate a ticket policy.\u00a0 And in most years, these pubs would be packed to the rafters.<\/p>\n

When we set out in the last couple of hours of 2006, we fully expected the same crowds as the year before.\u00a0 So did the pubs, apparently, because they had hired security to control entry \u2013 something that was common for British nightclubs but rare for pubs.\u00a0 What none of us had anticipated though, was that the pubs would be almost\u00a0empty<\/em>!\u00a0 Nor was it just one or two pubs.\u00a0 Everywhere we went it was the same story.\u00a0 Indeed, on one occasion the security staff hired to keep the masses out tried hard to encourage us to come in.\u00a0 Quite simply, tens of thousands of people who had previously gone to pubs to celebrate New Year, stayed at home in 2006.<\/p>\n

To me it was a warning sign that something unpleasant and dramatic was about to happen to the economy. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t that the beer had risen in price \u2013 although supermarket beer had long been cheaper than pub beer.\u00a0 It was an indicator of something much more profound.\u00a0 Coming on the heels of rising fuel prices and the central bank decision to begin jacking up interest rates, it was a signal that people\u2019s standard of living had been impacted to the point that discretionary spending was being seriously curtailed.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A red light on the dashboard On New Year\u2019s Eve 2006-7, something unexpected happened.\u00a0 For most of the previous two decades, most of the pubs where I live had operated a system where they gave tickets to regular drinkers in order to limit the number of people seeking entry.\u00a0 This was a problem because one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[23193,1264,32089,30640,31360,6593],"class_list":["post-60289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-fuel-prices","tag-recession","tag-signal","tag-the-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-tim-watkins","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60290,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60289\/revisions\/60290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}