To wonder if it was as bad as people say in the 70s?

[juicee2]

I am quite curious about it.

What caused the poverty? I thought the 80s were a poor decade - am I wrong?

Oh the music though fantastic sweet, slade, Marc, and my sisters favourite ‘we love the osmonds’

I left home in 1970 (aged 16) and got a job in an Oxford Street London department store that had a hostel in Gower Street in Bloomsbury for its female staff. It was amazing to be able to live there. I remember Biba on Kensington High Street. I don't think of the 1970s as terrible at all, but I'm fairly ancient now, so may well have forgotten some things.

Ooh yes! The corona man! Pop delivered to the door. We never had this, always envied those who did.

We did have brief sugar shortages and flour shortages but it was only a matter of weeks. We have always made our own bread and the grocer made sure we got our usual amount. The power cuts were a period of three or four hours for a few days a week and lasted a couple of months at most. It really didn’t define the whole decade.
We had two cars, washing machine, colour television, central heating. Obviously not everybody did, but there was nothing unusual about it.

I think kids don't 'play out' these days due to an exponential increase in traffic on the roads. There's nowhere safe/deserted or easily accessible without having to negotiate cars. It's nothing to do with not being able to weigh up risk, it's just so bloody easy to step out from behind a parked car into the path of a car.

Agree with the PP who said about far fewer children being overweight in the 70s. I can remember out of my primary school of about 300 children,there were probably 2 who were noticeably overweight, whereas nowadays,out of a class of say 30 kids,there would probably be at least 3 or 4 who are considerably overweight. Food was much 'plainer' so therefore much less interesting in those days. I can remember being over-awed because my best friend had CHOC ICES in her freezer! Can you imagine a child being excited by that nowadays?!

Born in 71. Didn't have a car and never went on foreign holidays. Went to Torquay every bloody year! Was out on my bike all of the time only comming home for food. TV was appalling.

To be honest I think ‘learning’ was fairly optional in a lot for schools. Many people left before taking any exams at all.

It wasn't awful for the whole decade!

I was 7/8 in 1970 and turned 18 in 1980. In many ways life WAS much better than it is now. I am certain there was less anxiety and depression, definitely among children and teens.

The cost of food and clothing as a proportion of household income was way higher though. I look at the prices of some things now and think how can they possibly be this cheap (usually things like cakes and "treats").

Biba oh yes... and Snob, I loved Snob. I left home at 17 too and went to live in a grotty flat with a girlfriend. Could barely afford to eat! But it was craved for independence.

I was 10 in 1976...long hot summer playing outside all day...off on my bike...building dens...playing cowboys & Indians...or soldiers...
I watched Newsround so knew of some of the social problems but only on a superficial level..we were shielded from 'grown up stuff'

We had a holiday each year...1 week at the seaside, Swanage or Minehead...and a week at relatives near Southport..no foreign holidays...I've only had a 1 foreign holiday in my life, when I was 18. Although DM and her now DH went for 2 weeks each year from around 1973-4..

I want to go out to play now reminiscing about the fun I had

I think you need to remember that 1970 was only 25 years after the end of the war. Many big cities that were bombed were still reconstructing. I was born in 1965 in Liverpool, there was a bomb site in the road I lived in, I had friends who lived in pre-fabs which were put up as temporary accommodation just after the war but were still in use 35 years later, we quite liked them, they had proper gardens, we had a back yard.

Looking back it all seems very grey, but at the time expectations were just different. We were working class but homeowners, we had a car, eventually we had a colour TV, one phone in the hall, We didnt have a washing machine until I was in my teens, everyone I knew went to the lauderette. My grandparents did not have an indoor toilet or any sort of bathroom until I was 18, ie 1983. Central heating was a luxury. A take away meant chips, KFC was a huge treat, McDonalds hadnt arrived. We never ate out, going out for coffee in a dept store was a rare event. We did have a summer holiday, to North Wales. Food was pretty much meat and two veg, spaghetti came out of a tin and was either hoops or Alphabetti, rice was a bit exotic. Three TV channels, channel 4 was terribly exciting.
I remember power cuts, three day weeks, strikes, the drought of 1976, and going to the stand pipe for water.
Its world away from the life my son enjoys. In contrast it looks very poor, but growing up I didnt feel poor, we were fed, housed, clothed, had what we needed. I did babysitting from age 14 so had money for clothes, make up, records.
The 1980s were very tough though, high unemployment, neither myself nor my brothers had any prospect of work when we left school and there is 10 years between us. They went on to job creation schemes and found work eventually. I had ALevels so moved away to university and never went back. I did go to Coventry which was as grim as Ghost Town describes.
There was real poverty then, my dad made deliveries to tenement flats known as the Piggeries, for very good reason. There is real poverty now.
But overall expectations were just different. There were rich people but not what might be seen as excessive consumption, and no shiny celebrity culture to compare our grey ordinary lives to.

I guess it's often held up by the Tories as being the awful decade that they said Thatcher brought to an end, and who knows, maybe she did, but what came after it wasn't great for everyone exactly either! But yes, there were lots of strikes and strictures. And before disco and punk came along the music was dreadful.

I notice the Tories are using 'Oooh, it'll be back to the 70s with Labour', without realising this means approximately nothing to anyone under about 45. I'm 40 and born in 77 so I remember nothing of the decade itself.

I remember the miners strikes, awful.
The IRA were very active, scary all of the time.
Yorkshire ripper, women were scared to go out at night.
Domestic violence was rife and seemingly acceptable and part of life.
Riots and especially football violence seemed to be on the news every day, it was a daily and never ending part of sport.
The tv only had 3 channels, finished at 10.30/11 ish, every Saturday it was grandstand which was a whole day of sport, we waited all day for the cartoons to come on.
On a Sunday it was little house on the prairie, bath and hair wash then the Muppet show.
The music was brilliant, the summers hot, the food minimal but enough and we played out all the time.

Wasn't horrendous, but was hard.

I can remember my DPs getting our first colour TV in 1970. I think I was probably one of about 6 kids in my class of 35 who had one,so I think this must indicate that we were relatively well off!,although this thought never entered my head at the time!

The cost of food and clothing as a proportion of household income was way higher though
I guess housing costs were comparatively cheaper instead though.

I remember Dad melting down candle-ends and making new ones in tin cans. And him playing the piano by candelight and knocking it over onto the wood and it burning. Clothes were all colours, none of this pink and blue rubbish. It snowed in June 1976 then turned into the long, hot ladybird summer.

(For those of you who are too young to remember, 100s of ladybirds would land on your wet washing to get water because it was so dry, and clouds of them would fly up if you shook the sheets :)

I also remember the events of 1978/9 well, as it was when I was heading for my teens and woke up to politics and how these people in London could have so much of an effect on our lives.

I don't personally remember anything about bread being rationed I worked in a local co-op. The other bakeries were on strike so we were the only supermarket with bread and it was rationed to one loaf per customer, home helps had to show their ID to get an extra load for their clients. Much fairer than the recent shortages due to the snow where the supermarkets were letting some people buy lots of loaves and milk cartons leaving others with none, I didn't manage to get bread for nearly a week.

Yep - remember WWII bomb sites. Fewer and fewer but definitely there.

I grew up in the 70's and can't remember it being awful at all!
As previous posters have said, we all played out in the street until bedtime, our parents weren't hovering obsessively over us watching our every move, and we had far more freedom than the average kid nowadays.
We also spent far more time outdoors, and obviously without the internet/mobile phones there was far less screen time, though I do remember watching telly from when I got home from school till about 5.30. Then I'd have my tea, and play outside with all the other kids till it was dark!
I think the helicopter parent definitely hadn't been invented back in the 70s, I think my parents were only dimly aware of when I sat any exams, and there was certainly no tutoring. My Dad just used to sigh and say that if I didn't do well in my exams then i was doomed to work in the local egg packing plant. But no pressure, no hot housing like nowadays. Still managed to get into a good Russell Group university despite the benign neglect. God knows how kids nowadays cope.
We went abroad a couple of times - to Scandinavia, which was rather exotic back then, but we went because my Dad didn't like the heat!
I vaguely remember the power cuts, but they were really exciting when we were kids!
The summer of 1976 is etched very clearly on my mind. It was soooo hot, for weeks and weeks on end. Bliss. And the winters were much colder than nowadays, though I did live in Scotland (and am now exiled in the south of England) so maybe that has influenced my memory!
Clothes were terrible, fashion was abysmal, but we were happy!
Food awful too, I remember living on Beef Vesta Curry when it was just me and my Dad living together - Mum and Dad split up when I was 10. But we didn't know any better so thought it was quite tasty!
I do remember corporal punshment at school, in Scotland you got the belt (or the tawse, as it was known), but somehow I managed to escape that particularly sadistic punishment!

Oh yeah...phone at the end of road and 1 bar of chocolate a week...although had a pudding every day...stewed apple and custard or macaroni pudding type..

I guess housing costs were comparatively cheaper instead though. Houses cost a lot less but interest rates were so high they still felt unaffordable. I had to go back to work when my second baby was 5 months old as our mortgage had gone up so much it was more than half my husband's wage and by the time we paid council tax, gas and electric there was no money for food. Makes me laugh when people tell me we were all SAHMs in the 70s.