What was England like in late 1998/early 1999?

[breaksinthedayforyou]

Interested to know.

I am a late 90s baby and can't believe that was now over 25 years ago

One of my earliest memories is going into Woolworths in Poplar. I was in a buggy and remember feeling cold

It randomly occurred to me that 1998, my birth year, is going to sound ancient to my own grandchildren/great grandchildren. Much like my great grandmother shocking my mum years ago by being born 'in the 1800s' 😃

I was 18. The general atmosphere was one of hope as others have said - the UK felt promising, Labour had just been elected.

The music was fantastic! That all felt very exciting.

Things felt very possible - perhaps because I was so young - but climate change / financial crash / bad government weren’t horrors that we knew were round the corner.

Friends went inter-railing in Europe, on gap years to India, or other general travelling and you knew nothing about it until they came back and told you! You might see a picture, but unlikely.

It was a much more positive time than now. Honestly, there is such negativity everywhere I look now and it’s so depressing.

This is so true, it did feel hopeful. I remember when Labour got in. I was one of only two people I knew at 6th form who'd actually bothered to vote - both of us just 18, so voting for the first time, and we were convinced we'd personally ousted 20 years of Tory government!

And those handwritten essays had to be physically handed in, of course, and as an inveterate Last-minute Lucy I remember running across the Quad to get it in my tutor's pigeonhole before the deadline, knackered from pulling an all-nighter to get it finished!

The music was amazing and I still remember the joy of bouncing around the local indie clubs with my mates, stumbling home in the wee hours.

Young people today don't seem to have that sort of freedom, there's so much more pressure on them, both financially and otherwise. ☹️

There was a lot of teenage pregnancy around tbf. @Calmdown14 is spot on there. 3 girls in my year group were pregnant by year 11. Many more by year 13.

I myself got pregnant at 19, but I didn’t keep the pregnancy.

I was 13. Spice Girls were huge and we would dance and cover ourselves in glitter and put on shows to their music. We weren’t so concerned with how we looked, we followed the trends but it was much easier to get it right. Less pressure.

Not as much parental involvement. I spent most weekends in Camden Market, I can’t imagine allowing a 13 year old to do that now!!

In 98/99 I was studying hard for my a levels. No internet distractions (though at college there were a few internet enabled computers in the careers room… we opened up yahoo and followed headings to find things out).

I had looked round unis by myself - my parents gave me the money for the train ticket and then off I went. Rang the national rail line up to find out the best train times and off I went, discovering bus routes in strange cities. I’m so glad I had this experience, grew my independence.

In contrast to PPs, the January sales did start on Boxing Day though, I’m sure my friend who worked for Next was tagging things up on Christmas Eve ready for the idiots who queued at 5am on Boxing Day. And I lived in a rough area, walking home from the bus or train station took me past druggies and wasn’t much fun.

Housing was a lot cheaper, there were far fewer security checks when flying, so travel was easier, there were far fewer rough sleepers, destitution was unusual, and the gap between rich and poor was smaller, university was affordable, casual racism, sexism, ablism and homophobia were commonplace, HIV was a death sentence, Woolworths pick & mix was a national institution, visible tattoos and unnaturally dyed hair were considered extreme, pubic hair grooming beyond the bikini line was veering into kinky territory, smartphones weren't a thing, the internet was very, very basic, it was easy to get NHS dental care, there was no same sex marriage, section 28 was in place in schools, neurodivergent people were largely undiagnosed, public places reeked of cigarette smoke and it was not unusual to come back from a nightclub with a cigarette burn on your clothes.

I was 17/18. Drinks were a lot cheaper! Out every weekend with £10/£15. Could get drunk and get a taxi home with friends!
Can't say about politics - wasn't really interested/aware and lived at home with parents.
No proper internet and no smart phones, so there was definitely more physical interaction with friends, rather than messages all the time!

uni tuition fees just come in, grants ended - I had friends who decided not to go to uni because of this

back then, everyone who was born a male, stayed a male

and everyone who was born a female, stayed a female

no snowflakes, people didn’t go around looking for reasons to be offended, it was great

I think the sense of hopefulness that people are talking about came from the fact that we’d seen the world get constantly better for fifty years since since WW2 and we expected it to continue. Which obviously didn’t happen.

I was in Scotland and early 20s. There was such a surge of optimism when New Labour got in.

Music had been great for a decade - tailing off by the late 90s but I bought NME and Melody Maker every week. Magazines were great. Even lads mags had their good points.

I had a basic Nokia and a word processor.

You could smoke in pubs and restaurants. I haven’t smoked for 18 years and I still miss that.

It felt easier when you got your news from the paper or radio and not 24 hours a day from a million different sources with everyone having an online opinion - I think you had a clearer narrative of whatever the big stories were at the time. It wasn’t necessarily better, but less stressful.

I think it was before the media started to push the idea that we had to have a black and white, polarised view of things - yes, there had been Blur v Oasis and more seriously, the Scottish devolution vote, but it wasn’t like now with this mad obsession with ‘balance’ meaning the BBC has to interview Nigel Farage talking drivel 900 times in two years, absolute intolerance of opposing views and people getting cancelled all over the place.

I was at uni. Got my first phone around then and started being able to use the internet a bit. They were the glory days! We watched lots and lots of Friends.

One think you didn’t have was the ubiquitous coffee shops you have everywhere now. They probably had just started popping up but it wasn’t till the early 00s where you had them in every town.

I know there were some positive things about the late-90s, and any past era really, but when middle-aged people reflect back on their teens and 20s, most do tend to see it through rose-tinted glasses. Most people have happy memories of a time when they were young and had fewer responsibilities.

I was born in 1990 and although my childhood was relatively happy, there were some quite depressing aspects of the 90s. Divorce skyrocketed in the UK in the 80s and 90s, the divorce rate was higher than it is now. My parents divorced in the mid-90s and so did nearly all of my childhood friends' parents. Most of my friends either had absent fathers or a beloved dad they only got to visit every other weekend.

Everyone was more openly racist and homophobic. When an Indian family ran a newsagent, everyone would call it the p-word shop. And that was in the south east, where there's less racial tension than the big cities.

Cars were crap and would get stolen more easily. Everyone smoked everywhere. Consumerism was through the roof - it was constantly about upgrading your home electronics and appliances. Everyone had to have the latest VHS, camcorder, games console, hi-fi system, etc. There were lots of burglaries, lots of expensive consumer electronics to steal.

No-one recycled anything and there was even more plastic tat than there is now.

The list goes on... I don't mean to be negative but wanted to add some balance to some of the rose-tinted memories.

@CavalierApproach I bloody loved Gucci Envy.

I was living and studying in Oxford at the time OP. What's really interesting for me is that my DD is there now, 25 years on, at a college just down the road from me. Oxford doesn't change quickly, and a lot of the cafés etc are exactly the same. However, there is MUCH more of an emphasis on mental health and wellbeing at the university now. In the late 90s, it was a little bit sink or swim. I absolutely loved it though, and feel very lucky to have studied in such a beautiful place at such a hopeful time.

It was so much cheaper to live.
My boyfriend and I shared a room in a massive (cold) house in Brighton for £100 a month, £50 each. We worked for 6 months then travelled around South America for 6 months. No chance of doing that now.
It was a much freer time. I didn't worry about a career except in an abstract "what will I do in the future" way (I was mid 20s and now have a good job). We moved around cities a lot on a whim, went to festivals, clubbing, out drinking all the time on barely any money. The minimum wage was fucking azing and doubled my wage over night. Lots of optimism for the future.
People were more openly homophobic and racist though. And we thought it wasn't sexist anymore but that obviously wasn't true. It felt safer although it wasn't people just didn't know about stuff because no internet.
We some how managed to meet up with people without phones. I can't remember how that happened so easily!
But all in all good times.

@Lavenderblume i liked reading that - very true.

The other not entirely positive things were

Teenage pregnancies and on the back of that sexual abuse.
Homophobia
Being generally accepted you’d be touched up on a night out
Children from poor families demonised

there are others

Dial up Internet- your mum screaming you to get off the computer to phone someone.
Windows95, Windows98
Walkmans
VHS
Tv and computer screens were huge by today's standard but positively tiny compared to what came before.
Nokia snake!

Spice Girls, Gina G, Aqua all the best cheese!

Groovy Chick?
Polly Pocket
Furbys
Tamagotchis

Some of these probably extend a bit either side of '98 but I was 6 at the time.

@Lavenderblume I agree with lots of the negatives.
However divorce rates was a good thing for many as it was the first decade it was socially acceptable to divorce. In the 80s it was still taboo so lots of women trapped on hideous marriages.
As for recycling etc, I remember taking my own bags to a supermarket and the cashier insisting on me taking new ones in case she got in trouble!

@Lavenderblume

''I know there were some positive things about the late-90s, and any past era really, but when middle-aged people reflect back on their teens and 20s, most do tend to see it through rose-tinted glasses. Most people have happy memories of a time when they were young and had fewer responsibilities. ''

I am going to disagree because there are facts that you can't just dismiss as ''rose tinted glasses'':

• lower house prices and rents
• a Labour government
• cheaper cost of living in general
• No tuition fee before 1998 (I managed to go into Central St Martins that way and could never afford to go to art school now)
• No Brexit and we were not consider as a joke country by the rest of the world...

If you are able to get a roof over your head and the cost of living is not crippling you then of course you have at least the basics for a decent life.

No decade is perfect but there is no denying that more people are struggling with the basics (paying bills, having a secure home) these days.

It was when music started to get really crap in my opinion - old Top of the Pops from about 1997 onwards is rubbish.

I was working in my first 'proper' full time & one thing I clearly remember is my 'seniors' were earning 10k plus commission per year & were about 24/25. The all had a mortgage on a flat that cost about 30k in our area at the time & ran a cheap car & went on holiday abroad once a year. They were far from rich but could live comfortably & I'm sad that these day's are over 😢 they were not university educated & worked hard but still had a comfortable life. Those day's are gone & I feel so sorry for young people now xx

I bought my first flat in 1994 offplan on a new development. It was just over £35k for 2 beds on the ground floor, they even paid my deposit! My salary at the time was 12.5k.

Ah yes... the constant wolf whistles even as an 11yo school girl. It was almost socially acceptable to look at young teens on that way.

Pg3 girls and countdowns until girls were legal

It wasn't all fun and games