Smoking in pubs, free speech, having a laugh

[Wannalivewithcommonpeople]

Aibu to miss all this? The relaxed, laid back FUN of the 90’s to maybe maybe late 2010
ish?
I don’t smoke or take drugs anymore, hell I haven’t been able to drink in 21 months, due to long covid, but sat here watching 90’s & 2000’s music videos whilst Dh takes toddler out and thinking of the past.
Aibu to just bloody miss the simplicity and fun and to hate these times?

@TrishM80

Tories weren't in power all the time either, that helped.

Most of the 90's - Blair didn't become Prime Minister till 97. Oh the shock of going red....the hope that the country felt with the change. The campaign song was 'Things can only get better....' It was a time of optimism. Maybe that's what's missing now...

As someone who remembers both decades, I think the 80s were worse than the 90s for intolerance of the 'wrong' political opinions, and both were worse than now for general intolerance of the 'wrong' political views, though the most extreme are worse now.

I remember being occasionally shouted at and sneered at in the 80s, both by Thatcherites for being left-wing, and by left-wingers for not being left-wing enough. It hasn't happened to me recently, though maybe it's because I'm in a different age-group.

I remember all sorts of arguments between different groups of feminists as to how feminism should be pursued: there was one extreme shade of opinion that one acquaintance held, that all men should be castrated and their sperm frozen for use by women to be able to reproduce (presumably embryo selection and/or selective abortion would ensure that only girls were born).

At the other end of the scale, a student journalist reproduced an unflattering picture of a woman speaker about feminism, and captioned it: 'Would you rape this woman? The unacceptable face of feminism'.

And it wasn't just a matter of some students being crude. There was no legal concept of rape within marriage until 1994. Even in the rare cases where men were prosecuted for rape, they were often acquitted because the victim had 'asked for it' by wearing revealing clothing. When one rapist was convicted for raping a hitchhiker, the judge let him off with a fine because the victim had shown 'contributory negligence' by hitchhiking in the first place. While rape cases still rarely result in conviction, and there are still obnoxious stereotypes about rape victims, I don't think a judge would be able to say quite that now.

To go back to censorship, Mary Whitehouse was still very active in the 80s. She absolutely frothed at the mouth over some swear words in 'Brookside' and tried to use the blasphemy laws (yes, they still existed until 2008!) against the films 'Monty Python's Life of Brian' and 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. While this particular sort of censorship outcry was less common by the 90s, Section 28 forbade (at least as interpreted) any acknowledgement within schools of the existence of homosexual relationships.

What is worse now is the opportunity to hound people through social media.

Also: people have spoken here about academics and other professionals being sacked or threatened with job loss for 'politically incorrect' statements. This sometimes happens, or more often is threatened, and this is wrong. But it is not nearly as common as threats to get rid of people, or not employ them in the first place, because they have dared to disagree with a powerful person (if it's in academia, often on some issue that might seem utterly trivial and arcane to someone else). I don't dare, even 30 years later, for my own sake and others', to go into any identifying detail, but cases that I knew of, in the 90s and with different people in different places, included: (1) a senior academic rebuking a junior person without official tenure for inviting someone with whom he disagreed on an academic issue to speak at a seminar, and immediately going on to threaten them about their 'future' in the department; (2) a senior academic contacting members of an interview panel (of which he was not a member) to demand that they reject a job applicant, who had published an article critical of one of this academic's articles 10 years earlier; (3) a senior academic giving low marks to undergraduate exam essays if they expressed views on a particular issue that supported a rival academic in the same department (this was fortunately largely scuppered when the papers came to second-marking by an independent examiner), None of these related to anything connected with big-P Politics.

@BigYellowHat

I miss free speech the most. I hate the fact that it’s only DH, my mum and two friends I feel comfortable talking freely about things. Although one of the two friends I wouldn’t talk politics with as she’s quite opinionated. My sister, I can’t talk to about anything. It’s basically her kids, her Instagram account and work 🥱 Nothing else and it’s boring frankly. Years ago you could say pretty much anything to anyone and it was fine.

Don’t miss smoking in pubs though.

Your sister would be dull in any decade. I don't know what you mean by saying you could say "anything to anyone".

[quote Pensieve]@OverTheRubicon

Going to the pub and enjoying yourself without social media and COVID times etc. doesn’t mean someone was oppressive. What a ridiculous post and just means you’re a dick to suggest so (your words).[/quote]
You realise I was quoting another post, right? Not my words, actually.

I did agree with the overall sentiment though, because as someone who doesn't have a white British heritage, the 90s was absolutely not a time of freedom - all these people saying how racism wasn't a thing are absolutely deluding themselves, and as for all the posters saying "you can't say anything nowadays"... Makes me wonder what it is they really want to say.

It’s nostalgia- most people look back and remember the good times, not the bad.I never smoked so deffo don’t miss coming home from a night out reeking of someone else’s fav smoke.

I miss the days when arranging to meet people meant turning up on time rather than texting that you were running late.

While I am really glad people can't smoke in pubs now, because it was gross and actually made me avoid them, I understand the sentiment I think. Just - have fun and don't obsess about ever little thing. Life is a terminal disease so live it.

The talking thing is also an issue, I had a friend who didn't have a contract renewed because someone overheard her having a conversation over dinner with a friend about something politically sensitive. It was quite the shock since she'd been until recently living abroad in a place where westerners legally had to be really careful about what they said in public and was so glad to be out of that place! It should be possible to talk about things in a public space without looking over your shoulder.

Now it's all, don't talk about that, don't do that, don't stand too close, bla bla bla.

@CounsellorTroi

I miss the days when arranging to meet people meant turning up on time rather than texting that you were running late.

Though in fairness, in my experience that also frequently meant hanging around hoping someone would eventually show up as you had no method of getting in touch, assuming they’d left home.

I also remember things about university, i.e the huge pub crawls when you used to write all over each others t-shirts and get a wristband for 10p shots of vodka. It just wouldn't be allowed to happen now.

It would be allowed to happen. Whether the students could afford it nowadays might be another matter!

A lot of changes in student culture reflect the fact that on the one hand a lot more students go to uni now than 30 years ago, and on the other hand they have to pay a lot more for it.

I miss the days when arranging to meet people meant turning up on time rather than texting that you were running late.

You must have had a more reliable and punctual set of friends than many of us! People turned up late then too, or sometimes failed to turn up at all; the difference was that we hadn't a clue when or whether they would turn up and wasted lots of time on waiting around.

My sister, I can’t talk to about anything. It’s basically her kids, her Instagram account and work

In the 90s, it would have been her kids, her favourite TV programmes and work. Not everyone would be an exciting conversationalist at any time!

Thank you didl1 for your measured responses here.

Its hard not to cringe reading much of this thread.

I worked in a busy town centre pub in the late 90s before the smoking ban. The smell on clothes and hair was absolutely disgusting. I definitely do not miss that aspect.

Agree regarding camera phones - thank god they didn’t exist back then. As it stands I have a dozen or so night out photos from back then, all taken on disposable cameras. That’s more than enough!

@ItsLoisSangersFault Which parts?

@ItsLoisSangersFault

Thank you didl1 for your measured responses here.

Its hard not to cringe reading much of this thread.

Thanks!

Not relevant to the particular thread, but can I presume on the basis of your username that you are also an Antonia Forest fan?

It definitely seems more serious now. Are todays 15 year olds going clubbing and catching the night bus home? Probably not.

@Siameasy Exactly 🤷🏻‍♀️

On a nostalgic note for those if a like mind, may I recommend watching British Rock on Netflix for a fabulous section showing Chrissy Hinds in a pub rehearsing Brass in Pocket fag in hand the whole way through..... kind of captured some of the spirit of the thread I felt 😊

I'm with you OP. I'm not denying that a lot of things have improved/changed for the better over the decades, but I miss the more simple way of life we had when I was young. Because many of today's young people have no idea of what life was really like "back in the day" they can't possibly understand the difference, and how good a lot of things really were. I'm older than you OP, so I'm thinking back a couple of decades, but even in the 90s much of life was still more fun. We made our own entertainment, and life could be fun even if you didn't have much money. Fashion, music, it all seemed much more colourful and interesting then. Life seems more jaded now somehow.

Everything felt much freer. There wasn't a constant competition to find things to be offended by. You've got a lot of sour people of this thread who seem quite joyless, but I get you.

Totally agree.

Also, to those saying we are just looking back on our youth with rose tinted spectacles - I wasn't that young in the 90s, but still think those days were better than now.

Some groups take offence at anything and everything. We have lost the art of discriminating between the offensive and the non offensive, of making a judgement. I am sick of grovelling apologies from celebs for something they said 15 years ago.

Exactly. A lot of people don't take offence easily and if someone says something they don't like (with the exception of something really nasty) they just think "what a knob" and carry on. But there are those, and they are increasing in numbers, who rush to management and put in a complaint. What they don't realise is that when these type of people hand in their notice the rest of their workmates silently rejoice!

But there are those, and they are increasing in numbers, who rush to management and put in a complaint. What they don't realise is that when these type of people hand in their notice the rest of their workmates silently rejoice!

There is at least one of those people on this thread. I forget who, but the poster said that she welcomed the movement towards recording everything on smartphones because she could collect evidence of what she considered wrongdoing and “get them fired”. The worst thing was, she followed that statement with a smiley face emoji! What a world.