To think the past is being misrepresented on here?

Nobody is suggesting going back, they are just describing the way in which the past is often misrepresented on here. Some of the posts show that there was a degree of social mobility via the 11+ and student grants which has diminished today. If you didn’t pass the 11+ though, tough. I have a decent house now yes but several foreign holidays, no, I can’t afford that and I did go to university from a working class background. Some things are much better and easier than they were in the 60s and 70s, some things are definitely worse.

One thing life has taught me - there is no such thing as stability in life. It can change in a second for anyone, anytime, in any way.

Children don’t need them and every single one I know has a phone and tablet?

Presumably you don't know every dc though? My dc share a tablet as it's often required for school work & the eldest has a phone for walking to & from school. They are both old models. But I'm not sure what that has do to with a decline in certain living standards?

Also I never one said it was ‘entitled’…that’s a leap.

I never said you did but that's often the general narrative

Children.
Also I never one said it was ‘entitled’…that’s a leap. We are talking about standards of living.

When I started teaching in the mid 1970s we were still allowed to smack the children but only the headteacher could use the cane (or a plimsoll). Years ago when I was teaching a Y6 class, we did a project on the school's history. We went through all the old log books and in the 1870s, yes 1870s, some boys were caned for swearing, smoking and gambling in class! Mind you, there were about 60 boys in the class so I guess they could hide quite well!

I don't know what Holden is

Children don’t need them and every single one I know has a phone and tablet?

1. house in suburbs - yes
2. foreign holidays - no
3. retirement. - not there yet, , but retirement age has been extended by seven years in my lifetime.

i also remember the playground fights in the 80s, and we’re not talking about an inner city deprived area, but a leafy posh ‘ Shire town.

in this same leafy town , my neighbour didn’t have a phone, and we’re talking late 70s/early 80 s. M

Everyone has a TV, a phone and a laptop/tablet as a right now. Even those I know who are struggling would see those as necessities.

Many people need a phone & laptop for education & jobs, why on earth wouldn't people have them vs a time they didn't exist?

No one argues it's entitled to expect antibiotics because there was a time they didn't exist.

@ThisUsernameIsNowTaken But have you got your house in the suburbs now? Can you afford several foreign holidays each year? Were you able to retire with years and years left to enjoy your retirement?

I was born in 1957. Where do I put in my complaint about the advantages that I haven't got?

BTW, most everywhere I look teenagers and early 20's are having foreign holidays. There's plenty of threads about them too. My parents / family never had a foreign holiday - they couldn't even afford UK holidays until I was a teenager and then it was a week camping. I didn't know a single person growing up who had foreign holidays, and I don't know any retired people who have several a year. Good luck to them if they can afford it but this is not the norm.

Of course they only dream of having those things someday. You understand that most of the people who are retired now did not have retirement money saved when they were in their 20s, right? Most retired people scrimped and saved for many years to save enough to retire and they still don't have a house in the suburbs or funds for several trips each year.

I don’t think it’s true that kids just behaved at school in the 80s. Perhaps more so in primary but secondary schools seem way better.

Fighting was a regular occurrence between Secondary schools in my county the 80s (my school was unusual in not being that involved). Playground fights were pretty common along with pupil on pupil physical assault in the loos and occasionally in class. Classes might not have been so disrupted as “bad” kids tended to bunk off a lot more and schools engaged in a lot of unofficial exclusion. Plenty of kids didn’t do their homework, vandalized school property, smoked and disrupted class. They just got turfed out quicker to become someone else’s problem.

My brother became a teacher in the 90s and thinks behavior now, even post pandemic is better than when he started - which his colleagues at the time said was better than when they were first starting when kids would routinely swear at them and walk out.

People expect things as a right of passage now. Everyone has a TV, a phone and a laptop/tablet as a right now. Even those I know who are struggling would see those as necessities. We didn’t have a TV growing up, or indeed se teal heating until I was a teen ( in the 80s). I remember being bitterly cold and ice on the windows. We never went abroad but that’s so much more accessible now, even the kids go through school and those that can’t afford it get it paid for by school. That was unheard of. I think we just expect more and are huge consumers these days. I also think every generation think it was better ‘ in the past’. It’s just rose tinted spectacles and definitely wasn’t!

Someone on here argued with me about my school experience in the 80s/90s. Everyone just generally behaved, there was very little bad behaviour and it was knocked on the head quickly.
It was a catholic school which all the parents had mostly been to and they were all still scared of the deputy head. The school was a real mix of people from council estates and very wealthy people from villages.
There was a lot of low level bullying though.
No one seemed to care that much about how well you were doing, I got good GCSEs doing very little work - I feel bad for DD as they are so much harder.

The 90s were great, town was great, going out was great and cheap. However I can also remember feeing bored out of my mind most of the time, extremely isolated from my friends as they lived miles away. You weren’t allowed to just sit on the phone. So in the holidays I didn’t see anyone for weeks. I wish I could go back and have a basic mobile then.

I remember that too. Df was watching, on our B/w.
Blue Peter used to annoy us too. They were always saying what wonderful colours!

My auntie had a video recorder and it was fun watching her fast forwarding and reversing Di toddling up and down the aisle. In retrospect don't we wish we could have fast reversed her on the actual day.

I remember a snooker commentator saying something like "for those of you with black and white tvs, the pink ball is the one behind the red!" 🤣

I was born in 72 and whilst SATS didn’t exist when I was in primary school, we had homework, times table tests, spelling tests and end of term exams (Christmas and summer term only for the exams as those were the terms we got our reports)

waves

Anyone ever tried to watch snooker on a black and white TV…🥴

Something else I forgot to mention - disability, especially learning disabilities or mental ill health, were often things to be ashamed of and they were often hidden away or "kept close in the local community". There were no benefits, and to an extent our level of benefits currently are recognition on how far we have travelled positively. I look forward to the Labour Party returning us to the good old times when disabled people had no support or help, lived in poverty (often with their families, and then were consigned to "homes" to see out what was left of their life when there was no longer anyone to care for them.

And for all their faults, back in those days we had a Labour Party, not a washed out version of the Tories masquerading as an alternative.

Born the same year.
We were probably the last to get a TV.( mid 70s ) I’d have been one of those cramming to watch at a friends house 🤣. Maybe it was yours !
My parents only upgraded to a colour TV for Charles and Diana’s wedding 😆

Yes I thought it was. When you are of an age you recognise certain "triggers" - my parents would never have got one had I not moved away.

Just adding, @EmmaMaria that uni is precisely why my mum made the decision to get a phone.

Also mid-60's and I can associate with most of this, except for me it was the mill not the mine. I think what people fail to recognise that things were really neither better nor worse - they were different. For example....

I have also seen a few posts saying conditions now are much worse resulting in poorer mental/physical health, hence a spike in disability. But again - can this be true? The world wars wounded, no antenatal tests, jobs like coal mining, loads of smoking/drinking, polio and measles… I’m sure there were a lot of people disabled with conditions they wouldn’t have now.

There have been wars since WW2 - veterans are still suffering the impacts of military service. Perhaps not in the same numbers, but at least now combat stresses are recognised (still not enough done to help though) - in the past they suffered in silence for a lifetime if they hadn't been shot at the front for cowardice.

I live in a "mining village" (pit closed in 1990). If you want to see the impacts of mining and pit closures on a place, pop around any time - a massive number of people still struggle with industrial illnesses, and will for a few more decades. But now they are lucky - the get the illnesses associated with poverty and unemployment.

Smoking may have abated overall, but it is still common in poorer areas alongside an increase in vaping which we still don't know the effects of. Ditto drinking - still common. But now you have a much greater availability of illegal drugs.

Polio - ok, we have fortunately almost entirely eradicated that in my lifetime although that has put us at risk because vaccinations fall when people no longer recognise the threat. Ditto measles, which is increasing whilst vaccinations are falling.

But we also didn't have Covid or anything like it. The other thing people tend not to recognise is that what poverty means changes over time too. People talk about how sad it is that we need food banks, for example, and I agree it is - but we didn't have food banks, overdrafts, credit cards or any way of managing other than coping on what we had. For many of us, there was no expectation of colour tv (or any TV at all) - I was 5 before we could afford a B&W tv and 12 before we had a colour one. My parents got a phone when I was 17 simply so I could stay in touch when I went to university - most people would die now befoire giving up their screens, no matter what their income.

It is neither better nor worse, just different, and the "nostalgia" or "jealousy" about the past is often fuelled by ignorance about its realities.