Gypsy Creams
Never ask a lady…
Woman / 17th August 1973
I picked this page because of the piece about dates of birth not being obligatory to open a National Savings account: for foreign readers, National Savings is the bank of the UK’s Treasury, offering investors a variety of savings and investments, all backed by the UK government, which, along with the US government, is just about as safe as you can get. The old saying about it being rude to ask a lady her age still holds a certain sway here, but I can’t imagine any woman of my generation being so neurotic about it that it stops her from opening a savings account. I also doubt very much that anyone’s allowed to withhold that information now, given the much larger volumes of data that are held about citizens nowadays. It’s a bit scary, really.
This isn’t the only thing to make this page interesting, though. There’s a great discussion around what motivates people to own shares, which is still relevant today, although the prejudices will of course be different. Not only that, but it seems that mortgages have always been a bit of a minefield when it comes to selling finance: the endowment policies that this article seems to praise also ran into trouble in the mid 1990s, due to the low inflation in the UK during this period, but were still sold to customers, causing a mis-selling scandal. Knowledge is power, people.
Tags: blatant sexism, dodgy advice, social history
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