price of new guns

[EricP]

You misunderstand the meaning of the words council house
A council house was not a subsidised house attached to the job they were rented accommodation provided by the local authority. In our area it did not matter where you worked, for the council, for the steelworks, or in the grocery shop you paid the same rent to the council, so that is your first argument out of the window.
In 1965 there were three cars in our street, but public transport was affordable.
The state pension was enough to live on, it was only in the seventies that people on basic state pension qualified for benefits, working people were able to build up a superannuated pension as well. Now a state pension is less than half the minimum wage, if someone was working 40 hours a week for £8000 a year it would be less than £4 per hour.
There was more chance of improvement. I was the second in my direct line to go to grammar school and the first to go to University. Then at university you did not have a loan, you had a grant and tuition provided free.
As I said then, no food banks. Even on benefits you could live. If you were working even with higher taxes, which I enumerated you could put a roof over your head and food on the table. At that time most households had only one breadwinner.
Between 1970 and 2022, taxation income has remained relatively constant at 23-24% of GDP, growth in GDP in pounds sterling has been for the most part less than 5% per year, average annual inflation has been 5.75% between 1970 and now, in 1970 there were 2.4 dollars to the pound, in 1990 it was 1.68, now it is less than 1.2, therefore in real terms over the last 50 years the value of the pound has halved, thus our GDP as a result of rising inflation and the falling pound is less than it was 50 years ago. That is largely because of the destruction of our manufacturing base by St Margaret and her disciples. It also means that the taxation income to the government is less when it costs more to provide services such as defence and health services due to the cost of modern systems
As to your argument about obesity, that is spurious. Then there were no ready meals and only fish and chips as fast food outlets. Most food was cooked at home from fresh ingredients. Sweets were in the sixties (certainly the early part) still considered a luxury as they had just come off rationing when I was born in 1957. The main cause of obesity now is cheap fast food and it is more prevalent in poorer areas. It is a sign of poverty, not plenty.
I am sure people could write whole books on the subject of how much worse off we are under the free market economy.

[Muskett]

"Banks and estate agents have pushed up the price of property by much more than inflation or wages."
No property prices have gone up because of supply and demand. There are 11 million more people, and far fewer share than ever before. Government controls the amount of houses built through planning controls.
Banks lend money to builders and buyers. Estate agents are just selling agents. Neither have anything to do with how many houses there are nor their value.
You got a mortgage and paid if off from your savings, like many have.
Price of property reflect two main things: supply and what jobs are available with the corresponding salary potential. London property are more expensive because of the higher paid jobs and everyone wants a bit of that action.

Companies should pay the market rate for labour. If they pay too little the workforce goes elsewhere to where they are more appreciated. Good management likes a loyal workforce that helps ensure the continuation of the company, but if a company can't make some profit after tax then what is the point? Month after month a company has to find business to pay for everything including wages, NI, and all the rest.
What profit after tax is the shareholders. Shareholders money is their savings and for the risk lending it to a company they should expect a return. Would you lend your savings, money, to a company for nothing?
In fact you possibly already do lend for a return if you have a Private pension scheme. How else does that pension pot grow?

Public Transport was hopeless when wholly in government control. The heyday of trains was when they were all Privately run, same goes for coaches. Presently the most costly and inefficient part of railways is the track maintenance which is still government owned.
As for Buses then they can only be done if subsidised. The reason is because everyone just loves their own transport, car. Most house have two cars outside them now, because we all love them.
It's only in cities with car restrictions that Public Transport has a hope of working. Be it tubes, buses, or trams, then often heavily subsidised. The true cost hidden because competition isn't allowed and OAP's are given it free.

The economics of rural areas just means the costs are higher as there are fewer people, bigger distances, and more logistics. Most local convenience shops are owned by Supermarket chains. Those Supermarket chains still outcompete any local competition like Farm Shops even though some farm shops have far higher quality of food stuffs to offer though they do cost more.

Thatcher? The manufacturing industries were destroyed well before Thatcher. Small industries from world wide competition and high domestic taxes. Large industries that were Nationalised and then underfunded by risk adverse and bankrupt governments.
Something had to change. The UK found service industries had far better returns that could be sold worldwide and few competitors. Thatcher allowed the banking sectors to find the cash for the investment needed. Good thing the UK found somethings it could sell for a profit as we would be a lot poorer without them.
Having said that we do have a manufacturing industry; its just high tech.

Thatchers Poll Tax? Well, it was a socialist tax and was rejected. Socialist because everyone paid the same for local services as everyone uses local services about the same. Do two people in an expensive house use more local services than two people in a council house? No, but the tax was rejected and the old system was retained based on house value not occupants.
Yes, the tax gearing was changed for local collection rather than coming from general taxation. The reason was to give more responsibility to local government. General Taxation still forms part of the total.
Council's cut staff because the services they provide ever increasing services and those services cost more. They also have to pay pensions for people that live ten years longer now.

No Food Banks? Sure there were; they were called soup kitchens. Without a job life was far starker. Thankfully, in the 1950s and 60's there were jobs from rebuilding after the war. It all went wrong during the socialist experiment of the 1970s with Nationalisation.

Yes, I do know what a Council House is. Why in this age are we providing any Council Houses bar for those in absolute need? Its still subsidised housing.
It's Council Planning offices that have stopped more houses being built. Builders would have built more if they were allowed to.

So you are middle class. There were opportunities then as there are now. Most people are already "improved", your words. Most people consider themselves middle class now because of their education and possibly because they own their own house. When you went higher education was free, but with so many going now general taxation can't afford that. Should less people go and it be free again?

Another Thatcher knock. If the UK hadn't radically changed in the 1980s and 90's then are you suggesting the disaster of the 1970s would have provided the progress we have made?

Lastly, ask why poor people eat rubbish food now? Takeaways are expensive. Anyone with some basic cooking skills can make a better meal for half the price of a takeaway.
The reason is that even the poorest here can afford the food to make them fat.

I'm not sure where this discussion is going. Everyone in the UK enjoys a far higher standard of living than those in the 1960s, by quite a big margin. Thatcher was rough, but change was needed. Without that change, and if we had have continued with the disaster of the 1970s, then we would all be far poorer than now.
Absolutely there are things to be done. I just say excessive taxation has gone far enough. Excessive taxation kills progress. Lefty governmental policies are strangling our economy from the bureaucracy, costs, and spending of it all. I trust individuals more than some Big Brother State. When is it too much tax?

[Bellycrawler]

Since 1999/2000 my income has slowly got less, everything else has sky rocketed. I'm now retired, looking at prices I don't think I'll be getting a new rifle ever again. Last guns I bought new was a S200 & several powder burners. Not only are costs riseong, it would seem quality is dropping.

[Muskett]

Bellycrawler, yes I do agree times are not so groovy. When retired much depends on what pension you have and what investments you might have; savings.

Interest rates were kept low by governments. So saving got very little interest.
Interest rates are going up, but inflation is kicking in due to so much government borrowing/monetary easing.

I think a lot is due to the late 1990s and 2000, where the UK was booming off borrowing. We were living way beyond our means. Productivity wasn't going up, so why were we all paying ourselves more? Government kept on spending on all sorts of projects, but mainly on bureaucracy. The Public Sector bloated by 900,000 more people; doing what? They weren't on the front line.
In the good times we should have saved something, but we just spent, spent, spent.

Then the Banking crisis, and Austerity Light to make the correction that was well overdue.
Still not enough houses built and open immigration. Population growth went off the chart.

C-19 and Fuel prices are outside influences. Putin is to blame for the latter. Both have been expensive. Next year might well be better.

Government should stop spending on social engineering and have the State run on what UK can afford. Presently, the young are getting our debts and are being taxed too high. No wonder they are glum.

[Muskett]

"I am sure people could write whole books on the subject of how much worse off we are under the free market economy."

We haven't had a domestic free market economy since pre WW1.
However, the free trade and world wide economics has been reasonably capitalistic. It has seen the greatest human population growth of all time, whilst seeing object poverty fall dramatically. Never have standards of living been so high for so may people. The poorest peoples are a whole less poor than they have ever been.

Though we have never had it better, the fear is that we can't maintain the level that we presently enjoy. Socialist bureaucracy, central planning, mountains of legislation, high taxation, and all the other big State costs are stifling people's industry.
Its why the EU and the UK are in decline. When the central State gets too big and too domineering then progress is lost.

What socialist system hasn't brought decline? Presently we have a mix, but socialistic tendencies have produced an ever engulfing bigger State. Free market there isn't because the State keeps interfering. What hasn't the State got its finger in the pie?
The State is responsible for the housing market.
It's responsible for fuel costs.
It's responsible for education.
It's responsible for the Health System.
It's the biggest employer and sets wages.
It set interest rates.
It sets immigration policy.
It licenses and legislates business.
It's responsible for the tax system.
A pretty socialist set up by all accounts. And it expects the Private sector to pay for it all, the sector its killing with high taxes.

Where there is free trade then thats because we have a world market, but the State sets import taxes.

The time the UK went super rich was when it had an Empire monopoly. Free trade was great because no one could touch us. The UK can only survive with world wide trade because our island is too little, has too many people, and few natural resources. We are a trading nation, or we go bust. If we don't attract investment to find the next best things by taking risks then we go bust. High taxation on success kills investment.

To say the 1960s and 1970s were better than today is daft.

[rapidresponse1]

a few years back i thought id never be able to buy a new gun again nearly living on the streets then after the help of my good mate peter i managed to get back on my feet

[WILBA]

a few years back i thought id never be able to buy a new gun again nearly living on the streets then after the help of my good mate peter i managed to get back on my feet

Well done to you sir. You hsve come a long way.

[Hartcliffer]

Back on topic, Air Arms rifles didn't increase in price because of Brexit, or Covid; they increased when Air Arms changed distributor. The prices shot up by over £100 on all their models.

[Muskett]

Many a rifle manufacturer want to make rifles, and have far less interest in all the marketing and distribution. Most manufacturers aren't huge operations.
I remember visiting Theoben, it was one industrial unit employing less than a dozen people. Beretta was 20 plus industrial factories employing a good few hundred as they had military contracts.
Having an outside distributor takes all that paperwork and logistics away. However, the distributor usually guarantees a certain number of sales and has to get out there and sell the products to the consumers. They probably have a mix of products from several manufacturers to take around so sharing some of the costs between all the products. They have to charge for their efforts and the risk they are taking.
Each tier in the chain to get to the consumer adds to the cost. Recently some agents are demanding a good amount for their services which adds to the end ticket price. VAT on top then it really shows.

The old agent fees/charge was 5% for things that were easy enough to sell. Modern costs and advertising probably make 5% too little now. Often agents sell as high a price as they think the market can take. They discount when products aren't moving. Many an agent/distributor is a retailer too, and compete against the shops they also supply.
Thing is what margin does that leave now for say for a small gunshop? For a while retail now retail margins on new guns have been tiny. The shops rely on other products with higher margins such as clothing, or trading second hand goods.

I make a habit of not asking gun shops for a discount as they don't have much margins anyhow. If a distributor and retailer then hell yes as they have loads more to play with as they are getting both the agent and retail mark up.
Do support your gunshop as otherwise they won't be there when you need them.

The gun trade is hard graft. Their target market pretty demanding.

[simesgee]

Banks and estate agents have pushed up the price of property by much more than inflation or wages. ...

Don't think so. Supply and demand. Plus low interest rates.
So - as an example - UK population in 1982 when I bought my fist flat was about 54 million.
Today (does anybody know?) it's about 10-15 million more. And a higher proportion being single for longer.
So, as we don't want to cover the country in concrete for houses, and don't have the infrastructure to do so anyway we have less houses per captita. And don't blame Maggie either because we are talking bottoms in houses and it doesn't matter where these people come from and who lives in the sold off council houses, although it probable it isn't the strata of society of working people that we would like..
So, next low interest rates. Banks don't define this - the state of the economy and World prices and factors such as inflation do. Low interest rates mean that you can borrow more. So now (or previous to the Liz and Kwarzy show) people would borrow huge amounts until their eyes popped just to get on the property ladder. You had to.
All this kind of makes sense - until the interest rate goes up, which has happened before, and left a lot of poor souls in negative equity. Which very possible will happen again.
Not sure what the hell that's got to do with the price of potatoes or, indeed, air rifles

[Muskett]

Most homes are occupied.
Even Council Houses have stopped having a long term tenant having a family house once all the children have left. Te policy was hated but how can subsidised housing have half empty properties when young families need them?
Second homes are on the hit list now. Many a second home is a flat in London to work from, and a home with space in the countryside. Some are holiday homes for that space, that no rabbit hutch of a city flat can give.
Many people retiring downsize to clear any remaining mortgage and increase their pension pot. They move out of the cities to where house prices are lower which is usually were there are fewer jobs. Why Scotland is filling with retired people, and its NHS creaking under the pressure.
There will be some price drop from interest rate rises, but the only thing that will bring prices down are more houses to meet the demand. Those houses built where the work is.

Gun sales are all about supply and demand too. Gun sales will go down if the cost gets too expensive for people to buy. The market size isn't exactly huge, especially when finding somewhere to shoot isn't so easy. Shooting is a great sport and a lot cheaper than golf. But the government keep finding more barriers to entry for new shooter. Scottish Air Rifle licensing is such a barrier and was politically motivated. It has achieved nothing.
Older shooters have most of the guns they like already. Most guns are too well made. People can wear out their cars, but rifles? Some but not many as most can last a lifetime if not two.

I doubt new guns will get cheaper, just from the cost of living. Second hand will follow in the wake of the prices of new ones. Some second hand will struggle to find a market at all. SbyS shotguns, and Full bore inexpensive rifles barely hold any second hand value.
In truth without the US market then the Gun manufacturing trade would be in real trouble. Brilliantly the US has found love for Air Rifles again, and a few premium British makers can exist off that. They wouldn't survive on UK and Europe markets alone.

[rapidresponse1]

they hit some with unocupied rooms where i live with bedroom tax

[simesgee]

Bought my partners S410K new about ten years ago, but that is the only new gun I've (sorry "we've" ) bought for a long time. Two reasons for this.

First concerns pcp's and I wanted pre-AT so I could strip and repair myself - although I did get Ben Taylor to tweak one of mine as well.

Regards springers, as has been mentioned, a good second hand one will last a lifetime and usually has been tweaked (well, the ones I have are) to take the roughness out.

Actually, I did buy a HW95 new. Over limit, rough and just horrible. I'm sure with fettling it would have been great, but why should I have to do this on a new gun?
Actually, I think a well fettled 99 would be nice if it has the anti-cocking lever graunch mod (now standard?) fitted.
And there lies my point - new is expensive and you still have to strip, re-lube and grind the edges of a spring, then it isn't good value for money.

Then we get to the price of pellets. I am lucky as I bought a fair store some years ago. I seem to remember paying for AA 4.51's about £9 a tin.....

[rapidresponse1]

many thanks wilba i owe a lot to a good few of my mates that were there for me in the darkest of times

[derekm]

EricP, I'd say your well considered and well written posts hit the nail on the head.

To precis, one word, "FUBAR" would be sufficient!

You will never change the thinking of that other guy!