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?

Another child of the 70's.

I think people generally had less then. My parents were both teachers so we couldn't have been that hard up but we had no phone or colour TV until I was a teenager at the end of the decade - and our TV was rented rather than bought. Holidays always in the UK and eating out was a once a year treat on the last day of our holiday .

Bath once per week on. Sunday night, and far fewer clothes than nowadays. Toes cut off the end of your sandals if they started to get tight before the end of the Summer. Mom made a lot of our clothes and she would rework an old garment into a new one. Likewise homemade jumpers were unpicked and the wool reused.

Food was a mixture of home made traditional food but also stuff like Angel delight for desert. I remember the pop man - we had Alpine as this was cheaper than Corona.

I don't think I recall the 3 day week as such but I remember there being a problem regarding shortage of whatever fuel my school was heated with as school was only open for 3 days a week for a short period of time and I had to go along with my mom to the school where she taught as I was as too young to leave at home.

We had a very basic single turntable record player - some of my friends had 'music centres '. Also mini transistor radios and we'd record the top 20 on a Sunday evening using a separate tape recorder sitting next to it.

We used to huddle around a small transistor radio in the school canteen on a Tuesday at 1pm to hear the new Top 2o chart rundown.

And there was the hottest summer ever, and then everyone had to get their water from standpipes in the street and carry it home in a bucket

Not everyone - by a very log chalk.

You got exercise getting up to turn over the tv.
I hate all the bloody multiple doofers these days.

TV was good for documentaries - less dumbed down.

Vinyl was fine if you were careful and the sound was "fuller."

We had running mains water throughout the drought/s.

Hepzibar

That was my childhood to a tea I was 9 though

Um...am I allowed to say this?:- "Ahhh! tell kids today an' they won't believe you"

@FrankChickens: there was some sort of free place/assisted place scheme in 1975. Because a lot of my classmates were from the next borough and it was something to do with the councils having different policies.

I definitely ate more shit processed food in the 70s. Sorry, Mum.

I remember having compulsory milk at school and one poor girl was sick every time but said her Dad would beat her up if she didn't have it and beat her up if she was sick. Told the teacher but nothing done.

Remember a teacher pushing a kids head down a toilet and putting soap in their mouths then beating them up. The good old days.

gussy me too. Fray bentos pies. Findus crispy pancakes and tins of mixed vegs

I left university in 89 so feel I was shielded from the difficult aspects of the 1970s and 1980s. To me, they were great times, fun, exciting when I grew up, but to others they would have been times of hardship, poverty, unemployment, industrial decline and social unrest.

@ReanimatedSGB I think you're talking about the ending of Direct Grant schools - effectively private schools funded by government. Some LEAs took up the funding of places when the government stopped it - but I don't think that lasted very long anyway.

I was a poor child in the 70s and it was worse in some ways, I think. We did not have enough money to feed and clothe us all (but we were never homeless - a basic need that is now less well provided for than then). My mother often went hungry to make sure we could eat.

However, we were not really socially deprived, because although most people were better off than us and didn't go hungry, they didn't spend all their time doing things that cost lots of money. If we went to the rec. to play it would be full of kids from all backgrounds. Everyone went to Scouts/Guides (for 20p/week). No one in my school came back from the summer holidays with photos of holidays to exotic places. At best they'd be griping about a long car trip to France. We didn't get much at Christmas, but no one got piles of presents. We didn't need to have money to play with our friends and we didn't feel left out.

I think this is one of the big changes from the 70s. Absolute poverty has gone down a little since then, but relative poverty has seen a fairly big jump and a lot of things that are considered very normal cost quite a lot of money to participate in. This seems to be especially true for child-related things where regulation has massively increased costs without there being a big enough matching increase in the resources available for the less well off.

Oh look
another DAILY MAIL POST AND RUN
the OP asks a goady question and vanishes
this one will be in the
racist, sexist, tax dodging Daily Heil soon

I was born in 1960. I have nobrecollection of the toes being cut out of sandals/shoes. Not mine, my contemporaries or seeing the village children like that and I do recal rural poverty and people in tied cottages with one fire etc and very old bicycles (boneshakers?) As their only means of transport. Knowing children who had never been to the county town. But wveryone was better mannered and better behaved I think.

Houses seemed to be colder and often very damp and shabby furniture was the norm

Standards were lower

Support for people with mental health, single mothers, and racism was appalling

Of course there were good things and I remember many happy times but being under social services and in foster care violence and sexual abuse was so common place I am not sure how much they even bothered to protect children once in care

Direct Grant schools - effectively private schools funded by government. They were private schools with selective entry, but some places were set aside for non-paying pupils who had passed the 11plus. So if you passed, you could either go to the grammar school or to the direct grant school.

"My mum remembers the year I was born was very hot but she didn't like it as she was pregnant.
Then when my sister was born it was proper deep snow."

I was born in 77 so I think you were born in 76, which is known as a hot summer.
Your sister might have been 82, known for a cold winter.

My mum made some of my clothes and she made some cuddly toys too.
The tv was awful very racist and sexist. Only 3 channels. Kids programmes finished around 5.30 pm.
I remember watching Miss World and it was portrayed as perfectly acceptable for women to parade around in swimsuits and be judged on how they looked.
Schools had far more discipline. We had corporal punishment and all the naughty kids seemed to dissapear, I think they went to special schools or sonething, they certainly didn't stay at school.
Children with disabilities didn't attend my school either.
I was smacked for taking too long to get changed after pe.
Team captains picked the sports teams. I was ok because even though I wasn't sporty I wasn't unpopular so I was never the last to be picked.
Kids who struggled to understand were smacked and labelled naughty.
On the plus side teachers had less restrictions and could teach us things they saw for rather than sticking to rigid planning.
We went into farmers fields and picked peas and rolled around making patterns in the corn. One time the farmer caught us and threatened us with his shot gun!

I agree BoomsBoomsCousin.

I was a poor child of the '70s and remember power cuts, running out of coal (one open fire in the living room was the only heating we had), etc etc. We had a phone, but no car, record player, washing machine, no holidays etc.

Most people we knew had more money than us, but not lots more. There weren't the vast wealth inequalities that we have now. There was a sensible relationship between average salary/wage and housing costs. There was plentiful social housing. The benefit system was geared towards helping people, rather than sanctioning them.

We never had take always either. All our food was home made, everything, even pickled onions were pickled by my grandmother so too was the beetroot.
We very rarely had fizzy pop, it was expensive and sold in glass bottles.
We didn't have a car until I was older, we walked everywhere and just got on with it.

My mum was a single mother in the 70’s

I am well aware that for me being a single mum there is more support and the chance to return to education. That wouldn’t have even been thought about then unless it was something like a pitmans course, even if I did receive a loan (I pay it back at £35 a month) I also received housing benefit, help with child care costs i was getting by ok

some of it was great. some of it was awful.

we were poor - but so was everybody else so it didn't really matter. the summers were hotter and the winters were colder.

most stuff on television was rubbish - it was definitely not a golden age

there was loads of fantastic toys

christmas was brilliant

everyone smoked - i hated it, even as a kid

sundays were boring beyond belief

I'm told that we were poor but my parents had three cars between them, OTOH I had to wear clothes that my mum passed on to me when she got new ones. There was no after school child care so I waited in the garden shed when I got home from school, so did my brother when he came home. My children have it better than I did because they are the priority when it comes to who gets the money spent on them.