The sixties and seventies were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I lived in a Scottish mining village, but my father wasn't from the village and wasn't a miner so we weren't as badly affected by the miners' strikes. My mother's family were all miners and I vividly remember them having nothing to eat and the children of miners were given free school meals and extended families helping out when they could. It was a depressing time. The power cuts were exciting for us as children - and we had a coal fire so could cook over the open fire, if we had coal. We had no other form of heating in the house, so had ice inside the windows upstairs and when the winter was bad and we didn't have enough blankets we used heavy winter coats on top of the blankets to keep warm. Nobody had central heating until the 80s.
Then there were the bin strikes - rats in the streets and the army being called in. I also remember the bread shortage and one of the local bakeries, who made their own rolls, charging £1 for six rolls. It was the talk of the town!
My family were fairly fortunate in that we had a two-week self-catering holiday in various English or Welsh seaside town every year, driving down in a series of dilapidated ancient cars whose roadworthiness was debatable. Four adults and four children, along with the luggage, travelling in a normal-sized family car, pre motorways - so long journeys for short distances. Three of the adults smoking during the journey. I was frequently travel sick - and all the adults ended up with various smoking related illnesses, including the non-smoker.
We got a phone, with a private line no less, in 1971. I brought my school friends home to see it (under the bed in my parents room waiting to be installed) as they didn't believe me when I told them we were getting one. We got a colour TV (coin meter) for the 1974 football world cup. The box was enormous and we played with it for weeks. My mother bought a microwave oven in the early seventies; it was so big my father built it into the wall. It had no turntable and cost the price of a second hand car 
My parents were enlightened in that they didn't believe in hitting children, but we were assaulted fairly regularly by school teachers giving out punishment to entire classes when nobody would own up to a misdemeanour. I can still feel the pain of a leather belt hitting the soft tissue on your wrist when the teacher missed her or his target. The red welt on your arm stinging afterwards. This was in Primary School. Once we reached High School the male teachers weren't allowed to hit the girls, so if you were to be assaulted you had to go and knock on the staffroom door and ask a female teacher to do it, after telling her how many strikes. I had to do it once as I couldn't do my homework - literally couldn't do it as I didn't understand it and didn't know how to do it. Disgraceful. I also remember the female teachers in my High School going on strike as they wanted to wear trousers. They won the right to wear trousers after a couple of weeks.
I think, for the most part, I prefer life today.