Things Better in the Past

[NoisySnail]

It is common for younger people to state benefits of the past that only applied to middle class or better off working class people. Free university when hardly anyone from very poor backgrounds attended.

But they never talk about the benefits of the past that poor people like myself benefitted from - presumably because they did not know about them. So I thought it would be good to talk about those. I am thinking of the seventies and eighties.

Unemployment benefit - It used to be very easy to sign on. If you sign on now for Universal Credit because you are not working, you have to apply for loads and loads of jobs every week. Back then you only had to sign a form that you were looking for work. No one asked you for proof.
If you were unemployed for 12 months then you would be sent on a YTS placement. If you were coming up to 12 months you were sensible and applied for a decent one. There were ones that were sheer exploitation by private companies. But there were also really interesting ones with charities.

Private rents - Rents were cheaper than mortgage payments. It was buy to let that changed this. But before the laws changed so banks could offer buy to let mortgages, landlords always owned their houses outright. And during the seventies and some of the eighties you even had rent officers who would visit and if they thought the rent was too high, they could pressure the landlord to reduce the rent or ultimately go to court and get a lower rent set.

Guarantors - This did not really exist for renters. They started coming in for students in the nineties and spread to many landlords. But in the 70s and 80s the idea did not really exist.

Food Vouchers - Foodbanks did not really exist. But the equivalent of the DWP used to hand out food vouchers if they accepted you needed them.

Further Education - Local colleges used to run masses of courses that were free or heavily subsidised. Everything from qualifications to hobby classes. The hobby classes did not need to lead to a qualification. There would be lots of cake decorating, woodworking, flower arranging, and learn holiday French courses. My DH attended a basic car maintenance course that taught people simple repairs they could make themselves.

Free School Meals: Where we lived one secondary school in each area provided free school meals over the school holidays. Not all children entitled to them took advantage, but the option was there.

Nationalised Industries: Water, gas, electric, telephone and transport were all nationalised. It was not perfect, but it was cheaper.

There were things that were bad that have got better, But can you can think of others that benefitted poorer people?

@NoisySnail You are so right life was hard , even when you knew it was wrong to leave the children with a sibling , you had to , women had to work and no one was gonna help with childcare . It's ridicules to say one parent at work was enough to keep you going it was all scrimp and save for those women and bloody hard to do everything , they did everything those working class women .

Smoking absolutely everywhere too.

You could smoke at the back of the bus downstairs and on the whole of the top deck. Restaurants. The cinema. On planes. In pubs. You could even smoke inside the hospital. So many people who didn't smoke had no protection from exposure to second-hand smoke.

@bluetopazlove A lot of younger adults who talk about their mother being able to stay at home do not understand that the middle class is getting smaller. Jobs that were traditionally middle class are moving down both in terms of status and pay.
They also do not understand that jobs prior to the late eighties and nineties often had much less impressive job titles. The late eighties and nineties was when job titles suddenly became inflated as a free way of rewarding staff.
I mean my job title has manager in it. I manage no one. In the seventies and early eighties first line managers were rarely called managers. They were foremen, supervisors, seniors. Manager titles were reserved for more senior jobs. So I see people saying things like my dad was only a ...not understanding that was probably a reasonably senior job.

After work, I took DC to sports club, bought birthday gift for a colleague who's invited me to a birthday meal at weekend. Bought a coffee and phoned a friend for a chat whilst waiting. DH made dinner. Fairly average Thursday evening.

None of those things wouldve happened in the 1970's.

What do you mean none of those things would have happened in the 1970s? Children went to sports clubs, people bought birthday gifts for colleagues who invitited them to a birthday meal. If you bought a coffee you would have sat in a cafe to drink it, and believe it or not some women had DHs who cooked. At least all those things happened where I live.

I would go back to the 70s/80s, even the 90s, in a shot. People can quote the bad things all they like, but as far as my life is concerned those days were better.

It existed, but a great many families could not afford to turn it on even if they had it.

Thatcher made a huge change to the housing situation with her right to buy. Council housing stock has never recovered. Her self centred devil take the hindmost changed society for the worse too. The falklands war was a gift to her popularity with the hard of thinking.

You could do things on a whim years ago.

None of this download an app, book a one hour time slot 3 months in advance, show a QR code bollocks. You did what you fancied on the day, and if you went with your parents, dad parked right outside wherever it was you were going. Again, no yellow lines, no parking apps, no pay by app, no max 2 hour time limit nonsense. And if you had to get the bus, that was fine it was only 20p.

One income was sufficient for a mortgage and for a family so children had consistency from one parent I believe discipline of kids was better because they werent passed around different childcare

Free warm school milk (tbf i loved it while most hated it)

People didn't move around as much so everyone knew each other in a community. Lots of support from neighbours

People had a job for life and they worked their way up and largely security

@Maddy70

People didn't move around as much so everyone knew each other in a community. Lots of support from neighbours

That's a very important point. I don't ever remember hearing the plural form communities when I grew up. There was a lot less self segregation imo.

Yes, absolutely 💯, some things were better, not all, but some.

Our reasoning has been slowly chipped away over the past decade or so, we don't really understand how bad things have become. I was in Ireland recently, the difference is astonishing. Here our supermarket shelves are half empty, with only limited choices for the goods that are in stock. In Ireland the shelves are heaving, dozens of brands, no empty spaces, fresh food, made to order, in almost every type of shop.

Every pertol station I went to had a bank of coffee machines ( not the overpriced Costa branded ones we have here) and a deli counter with freshly made hot food or crisp salads. Actual deli staff who cooked what you wanted, in a petrol station!

We don't have that here. Can't even be sure that the shops will have milk sometimes.

The roads in Ireland are astonishing, long stretches, no roundabouts every half a mile and no pot holes. Just perfect, wide, smooth, high speed, open roads. And almost no roadworks anywhere. Here, you can't even drive the M4 without passing miles of coned off lanes, with no work being done. There have been roadworks in the Heads of the Valleys road in Wales which were started 19 years ago and are still no where near being finished. A similar scale construction of a 22 mile stretch of motorway in Ireland, between Cork and Killarney, took just a few years to complete. I have no idea why things are so difficult here, why can't they just fix the roads?

The police here are a joke, no equipment, embarrassingly low pay and atrocious working conditions. Same with the NHS, the mitary. We don't really have any functioning public services.

Twenty years ago I could rent a.converted garage in any town or city for a few hundred quid a month. Forget that now, they banned all the cheap accommodation and forced everyone to compete for the tiny number of "approved" properties. Given a choice of paying stupid money for a glorified shoe box, or a sketchy (but affoedable) converted garage, I know which one I would choose.

What's the point of having all this regulation if people can't afford the rent?

Who is it helping?

Yeah OP, things were better in the past.

I suspect that overall levels of poverty are much higher today - food banks are a relatively new thing in the uk and people didn't starve

Things were more equal

People got exercise just going about their daily lives

Diets were limited but healthier

The climate was less damaged

We had flies on the windscreen when you drove in the summer - ok I hated that then but would love to see that now - the damage to our environment is massive in that time

Yes!

The flies!

I drove the length of the UK and not a single one on the front of my car, twenty miles in Ireland and my windscreen was caked in them. There is something seriously wrong with our environment, and it's nothing to do with climate change, it's a localised issue.

Yes. And it's only relatively recently that all the QR code booking nonsense has sprung up - then it ramped up during Covid restrictions and has never gone away.

Health care is more advanced today.

Many survive what was a death sentence 30/40 years ago.

There were about 15 million fewer cars on the road.

If we limited on car per household now it would be the same.

@frozendaisy True. And about 15 million fewer people too. Our neighbour has 6 cars on the drive. One for every adult in the family. Obviously the younger ones can't move out because it's so expensive to rent/buy.

Edited to add that one of those is an EV. "We care about the environment guys!" Lol.

In the late 90s I was a suddenly a single mum of two with no qualifications other than GCSEs. I went back to college to study, eventually up to HNC level. It was all fully funded. My children got a free place in the college crèche while I was in lessons. I was allowed to claim benefits (inc housing benefit) while at college full-time. None of this would happen now under the Tories.

Once I was qualified I got a full-time job and within a year I bought a house.

I remember a relative of mine fell pregnant when she was 19. This would have been the early 80's. She was given a 3 bed council house, while she was still pregnant!

I do think it was easier for a family to survive on one wage. In the families I knew, if mum worked it was because she either wanted to and/or to get some money for extras.

I also preferred dating back then. Yes the pool was smaller but you met your boyfriend out and about or through friends etc. I don't know anyone who was "ghosted" back then. If someone wanted to break up with you, they generally at least told you! OLD has made people disposable.

1970, we didn't have central heating. Food was much less varied. Few takeaways. Chip shops & one very exciting chinese takeaway.

Further Education was far better. There used to be evening classes. It was possible to study for free, and Open University was much more accessible.

I did courses in vegetable gardening, plastering, brick laying, bike maintenance, and I think the most expensive was £5 per session.

@Menomeno I think the loss of this type of education has had a big impact on social mobility.

I think daily life was a bit more straightforward in some respects - if the cooker broke, you hopped down to the gas showroom in town, picked out a new one and the man in the shop brought it up and connected it that afternoon. No reading a gazillion reviews online, or waiting for something to be dispatched from the manufacturer. Shops actually carried stock!

Chocolate was much better.

As a student in the 90's it was easy for me to get a job - you could walk up the high street, pop in the shops and ask and you had a job within a couple of hours of looking.

To balance all that though - I do remember periods of being on the ones of my arse poor at times. And Sundays were boring AF - we have much more entertainment as standard now (lots of tv channels, streaming, internet, cheap kindle books )

What gets me is my dad worked in a factory and my mum p/t as a secretary and on those wages they managed to buy a house which is now worth half a million and have it paid off midlife.
They aren't short of money and have thoroughly enjoyed their retirement since aged 60, they spend their time going on cruses, eating in fancy restaurants and living a life most young people will find impossible to reach.
While neither of my parents had any further education than school.
That's what's seems unfair.

@wheredidthesungonow there are high paid jobs in factories. Just a quick google and there are plenty of posts for £50k plus per year. And secretaries were reasonably well paid. What we think now of secretaries were usually called typists. Secretaries were now what we would usually think of as PA's.
And this is what I meant when I talked in an earlier post about how job titles became inflated in the nineties.
So your parents could easily have been earning the equivalent of £80k a year. It is true house prices have soared, but a couple on that wage could still buy a decent house today.

@wheredidthesungonow they spend their time going on cruses, eating in fancy restaurants and living a life most young people will find impossible to reach.

You can turn that around though. My adult kids go on holiday abroad once or twice a year, and they’re always eating out and going to gigs, shows and festivals. We could never have afforded to do that in our 20s/30s. I only went abroad for the first time when I was 32!