What was life like in the 80s?

I left University in 1981 and got a really good job straight away.

If you lived in an industrial area and working as, say, a miner, you were stuffed. Thatcherism bit really hard for many.

The Big Bang opened up the economy and made lots of people rich. Home ownership was around 70% and rose due to Right to Buy.

Music was fab. We had Duran, Spandau, Boy George, Bananarama, Adam Ant, Shaky, Police and groups inspired by reggae such as UB40 (the name of the card you presented to collect your dole).

I thought I was cool and wore lots of jumpsuits and dungarees in bright colours.

I went to the then Soviet Union a couple of times which was very exotic indeed.

I became a house owner n 1987. DP had bought his first house at the age of 20.

Most people left school at 16. It was still quite unusual to go to University. Apprenticeships started to be replaced by the YTS.

To me, it felt optimistic and fun.

To others...mm..not so much.

Thinking about today, I still want to know how we found things out!!

For uni, I went to the university course brochures in the school careers room.

We used encyclopedias. Rang up companies to get train times.
Dad used to book his foreign caravan sites from a number in a foreign camping book.

I did a lot of research through a US trade directory and contacts to get a summer job abroad.

It took a lot of effort to do research.

When I was 16 in the mid eighties a teacher told us our generation would never know steady employment.
This was a steady uncontroversial RE teacher.
So shoulder pads and bright lipstick didn't really compensate for that.

My parents were lentil munchers so the eighties for me were a decade of sosmix, chickpea curry and weird salads combining watercress and oranges.

I used to read the Delia Smith book every day.

No treats or days out as such, but we did go on a foreign holiday in the late 80s to Greece, an experience I'll never forget.

Each night on holiday me and my sister would have souvlaki and chips and coke, and my parents had vegetarian mains with a selection of sides and a carafe of wine. Mum said it cost ten quid each night.

She said it was cheaper to fly us to Greece for a week than to run the house at home!

Couple of random shopping facts, Marks and Spencer didn't used to have changing rooms, so 'taking things back to Markies' was a standard pastime. John Lewis was closed on Mondays and didn't accept credit cards.

January and July sales were properly exciting because there weren't sales all year round. No such thing as fast fashion, supermarkets only sold food not clothes.

And when you left primary school at the end of p7 nobody cared or said anything! I just went home, had some toast and watched my VHS tape of Calamity Jane for the eight thousandth time.

It was more that credit was less freely available.

I had to see a bank manager for a car loan of £1000 with bank statements savings and outgoings. We were there a good hour going over repayments etc

Bank cards for ATMs were just available for cash at the bank rather than payments in shops.

People didn’t get approved for catalogues or loans etc unless it was a big item like a TV in HP repayment plan

I can remember a ch4 program called ‘minipops’ It was children mostly girls aged 5-10 ish dressed up in short skirts and adult style make up and dancing very suggestively to the latest pop records - still amazed that was allowed
But ch4 was considered ‘racy’ at its beginning
Smoking was allowed almost everywhere
No one worried about kids being out all day No one had a mobile phone- you had to ask to use the landline and risk speaking to a your friends parent first!
In our primary school we had one computer on a trolley which only the year 6 children ( were called 4th year primary then) were allowed to use- it was shared between both classes!

Freddy Laker would disagree. And Dan air AKA Dan Dare airlines.

Ooh, I forgot Laker Airlines - he did go bust though.

Many workplaces were heavily unionised in the early 80s, and you couldn't get a job there unless you joined the union. Strikes could be called without ballots of the workers and were quite frequent. Most jobs offered a pension based on half final salary.

The green movement was just getting started.

Disabled kids were rarely in mainstream schools, although that was something which changed over the decade.

People became more aware of child abuse. Childline was set up in the mid 80s.

Is that not down to TVs and take aways being relatively cheaper than the 80s rather than people on benefits being wealthy?
Perhaps. I think people felt justified because benefit claimants couldn’t afford the luxuries that working people had, like takeaways, alcohol, household appliances and holidays. There was (still is) a notion that benefits should only fund the absolute minimum. There’s a lot of righteous indignation nowadays because people on benefits often have the same as working people (even if that’s because stuff is cheaper).

For many people, benefits were a way of life in the 80s. There were a lot of long term claimants because of job losses in heavy industry and mining which left large numbers of middle aged adults with no job, no alternative jobs available in their communities and no experience or skills to do anything else. The DWP was much less stringent at booting people off benefits and it was feasible to claim unemployment for 20 years or more.

Chopin
I agree. Being 'out' and Gay wasn't a thing unless you lived in a big city.
I knew no openly gay people until I was about 20.

The fall guy!

Don’t forget the uproar of channel 4 and the Saturday comedians, black adder and the Brat Pack films

DH used to go backwards and forwards to America for work. At one stage he worked in the building used for the Ewing offices in Dallas. Our kids got a lot of kudos from that. 😀

I was a teen in the 80s and I loved it. Everyone watched the same TV on Saturday nights, The A Team, Knightrider (& one with Lee Majors I can’t remember name of) and TOTPs on Thursdays. I was also a brosette and wore DMs, jeans, short black leather jacket. My Mum still has the note I wrote begging her to queue to get concert tickets for them and promising I would be her best friend forever! I was working at Tesco on the checkouts on Saturdays but no scanners, if the price label had fallen off the product I used to go running round the shop to find the item, so funny now.
Loved Madonna and wanted to be like her, used to go ice skating Sat nights with fluorescent mixed socks.
Did have a perm and Rara skirt.

Life seemed so less complicated/pressured back then. Am so glad I grew up in 80s...

'Dallas' was on the telly and we were influenced fashion-wise by that - shoulder pads, blingy jewellery - even for everyday wear in the office. It was a 'smart' decade - people made the effort to look good. Big hair was all the rage and very flattering - much more so than the usual long, straight, sleek look which is often the 'go-to' style for teenagers. For the first time in my life I felt glamorous as my curly hair went into this style easily.

Whether the decade was kind to you depended on your work though. DH and I were lucky enough to never get made redundant - we may have got fed up with our jobs and sometimes longed to get the boot but they never got rid of us. We got on the housing ladder through hard work and saving and saw the value of our house soar. Others really weren't so lucky.

I wasn't keen on the music though - the 1960's/70's was really my time and I still don't like punk to this day, though I can understand disaffected youth being angry about their situation. They had a rotten time of it.

Sundays were quiet, no cars on the road, no shops open.
Less 'choice' - everyone had similar gadgets/toys/bikes/clothes.
Fun! Children didn't have pressure put on them at school the way they do now.

I was a teenager in the 80’s and when I look back it was flippin brilliant.
You could get jobs easily. Everyone seemed more laid back and not obsessed with their appearance. You could easily go clubbing two three times a week with not a lot of money in your purse.

I was 8 in 1980. The music was brilliant, we actually bought albums, didn't have mobile phones and wrote letters. I much preferred the 80s to now if I'm honest.

The 80s were a very dangerous time to be a child.

I don't think it's been mentioned. Sony Walkman. First music on the go via headphones.

And pleats, sharp formal pleats in dresses and skirts.

University in 1980 was not widespread; by 1989 everyone needed a degree.

Aerobics - on breakfast tv and the Green Goddess turning up at railway stations

The F Plan Diet

I was 20 in 1980 and just started my nurse training.We had accomodation in those days near the hospital for the first year and got paid.
It was a decade with many changes.
We didn't all have televisions,phones were at the end of the road.We had friends that we saw often,pubs were much more of a meeting place than now.
I bought a house,it needed a lot doing to it and apart from a few stick of second hand furniture nothing.I had too spruce it up and get a lodger when interest rates went through the roof.
There was a lot of unemployment but in the late 80s consumerism really seemed to ramp up.
I moved to London in the late 80s and the mood was more buoyant,apart from the IRA bombings.
The music was great.Fashion!Peasant skirts at the begining then the shoulder pads where your shirt would have pads,and your jumper and in winter with a coat on there was significant build up.
We had less clothes and they were expensive and lasted.Fashions had a slower turn around and we saw the return of frosted eye make up,coloured mascara and some truly aweful hair styles.Clothes were s lot more colourful too early on.
A big decade but then I was in my 2Os and having fun.
Oh,and the wine bar was invented so a different meeting place and wine became more of a thing to drink.

OP if you're enjoying the 1980s depiction in stranger things watch the goldbergs bloody love that show, my kids do too.

YTS

It was grim here and there. And ok here and there. Lots more poverty than there is now.

Shops were shut on Sundays, and no evening opening either. At the start of the decade there were still a lot of independent butchers, bakers, greengrocers, fishmongers - mostly gone by the end of the decade. Supermarkets got bigger. Ready meals began to be produced.

No out of season fruit on sale, eg no raspberries and strawberries all year round.

Choc ices were small and not on sticks. Fewer choices of ice cream flavour/brand; generally a choice of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. If you were lucky there would also be raspberry ripple and mint choc chip.

Coffee was pretty basic - no cappuccinos, americanos, flat whites.

No one picked up their dog's poo.

I lived in Poland in the mid/late 80s. Chernobyl affected a large chunk of the country - we didn’t buy/eat honey or mushrooms (particularly dried or bottled) as they were thought to be radioactive. Queues for things like toilet paper. Food was seasonal, so only cabbage, potatoes, onions and carrots in the winter. We had a big freezer and used to freeze summer fruit and veg like mad. Solidarnosc with Lech Wałęsa, and the end of the Warsaw Pact, free elections, people being able to keep their passports and travel, not swap them for your ID card when you went away. Inflation, and the old people saying that things were better under Communism.

Planes were expensive - no bargain airlines, so most people either holidayed in the UK, or drove over on a ferry, mainly to France.

Freddy Laker would disagree. And Dan air AKA Dan Dare airlines.

But people did get buses from the UK to Spain via the channel. Some even travelled on the hovercraft.