Carnival economy in for a rude shock guardian.co.tt/columnist/2015-01-20/carnival-economy-rude-shock Lisa Allen-Agostini Published: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 LISA ALLEN AGOSTINI With Carnival around the corner, soca fills the air once again. It’s a bittersweet time for me. I love soca, so hearing it makes me happy. But as a one-time Carnival jumbie I am struck with a deep tabanca for the days when I would be in every fete worthy of the name. Simultaneously I am appalled by the prices of today’s fetes, and realise that even if I did have the energy to be the feter I used to be, I couldn’t afford it. One of the biggest and most popular parties for the season is UWI Fete, the 2015 edition of which took place on Sunday. My Facebook feed says it was an unqualified success, and I’m happy the university’s scholarship coffers are jingling nicely with all that lovely money. But $1,250 a ticket seems to me an extraordinarily high price to pay to go to a fete, however good the cause that fete supports. Who are these people who pay that much money to attend an eight-hour party? How much food and drink and music do they have to consume during those eight hours to make it worth the price? And what other events will they be going to for the season? Clearly UWI Fete isn’t for the $15 an hour minimum wage earner or the junior clerk. Let’s say it’s the established professional. I looked on the Interwebs to find average monthly salaries in T&T and the Web site Numbeo tells me they range around $5,000 after tax. Another site, Glassdoor, lists specific jobs: a Scotiabank teller makes about $4,500 a month, for example, while a “BP leader” earns something like $40,000. So perhaps it’s more the multinational manager or senior employee who’s buying those all-inclusive fete tickets. I was chatting with Albert Laveau over the weekend at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop (TTW), a venerable institution that has been producing plays for donkey’s years. We were amused to note that the ticket price for a 1970s production of The Joker of Seville was $5. By the mid-90s the price had gone up to $25. Today it wouldn’t cost less than $250—and possibly more, as the cast is enormous. Similarly, the cost of a fete ticket in the mid-80s was $20, according to an old newspaper advertisement I saw floating around on the Interwebs recently. Inflation is real, and if the price of dinner mints has gone up by about 500 per cent during my lifetime there is certainly justification for the cost of entertainment to also go up. However, is the jump from $20 to $1,250 justifiable? Tears, the fete being advertised in that bit of old newsprint, was no all-inclusive. Ordinary fetes of that time would feature a live band or two, DJ music and a cash bar. The menu was corn soup and burgers you would buy outside the venue. Today’s all-inclusive is a horse of a different colour. On the Facebook page Trinidad Carnival Diary there’s a fete promising to serve Bellinis (a cocktail made from Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine, and peach nectar). So much for the rum and beer that was the staple of the Carnival fete I knew. Other all-inclusive fetes have served lobster and Champagne. So the extraordinary rise in prices is not just a function of inflation but also occasioned by the change in food and drink menus at parties. But surely if the Old Hilarians Fete, one of the better-reputed all-inclusives on the market, charges “only” $850 for a ticket, how do we get over the $1,000-mark on a UWI Fete or a Lara Fete? You can’t convince me that kind of price jump—a rise of 6,250 per cent!—has anything to do with the menu or the drinks, however luxurious. That’s not just inflation. That’s sheer opportunism. But back to the patronage of these events. Whoever the folks are driving this fete price inflation, the Carnival economy is in for a rude shock. With the recently plummeting oil prices, no matter who tells you different, companies—especially multinationals—are going to contract. BP and Schlumberger have both already announced layoffs internationally. I have no faith that T&T will not eventually be affected as these and other firms compensate for the precipitous drop in international oil prices. We will be affected, and Bellinis and lobster in fetes will be something we will look back on with incredulity, the way we look back now at the 10-cent dinner mint or the $5 play.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 13:19:18 +0000
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