To feel like it's one crisis after another.

[Outofideas79]

So I was born in the 80s. Since I became an adult it just feels like its one disaster after another. War with Afghanistan, war with Iraq, the financial crisis, austerity (I've not actually worked properly in a time when we weren't in austerity), public sector pay freezes, Brexit, Covid, war with Russia (we're there in all but name), crisis in national health, crisis in education (my colleagues daughter has been told to stay at home for a couple of days this week due to staff shortages), the country in financial crisis generally, inflation, high interest rates, cost of living crisis, dodgy housing market, and now to top off all that off, rapidly and frankly frighteningly increasing tensions in the middle east which I think we are now embroiled in whether we like it (or can afford it) or not.

It seems one thing after another and with no end in site. A general election this year, but how much can any new government change, impending conflict of some kind looking to undo any progress made with reducing the rate of inflation. Its all rather exhausting. Or is that just me 🤣 to put it in some context I work in the public sector, so budget cuts are at the forefront of my mind ATM.

Yup. My point exactly. Then what, Yugoslavia all went to shit in what, 93? and on and on and on...

Edit. 92.

This is a classic “change your mindset” situation.

more people live longer than ever before, in general violent crime and crime is decreasing, more children attain education for longer, living standards are up, less for es personnel die in battle than ever, we have had massive medical advances, huge scientific leaps, big improvements in racial equality.

there are exceptions to each of those statements, but very broadly, humans live better than in decades gone by.

True. I heartily recommend the book 'Factfulness - Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World, and Why Things Are Better Than You Think' by Hans Roslin. I know I said 'Yes life is always like this, because that's what humans are like', and that's true- conflict etc will always happen. But also plenty of things are getting better, not worse.

Also recommend 'Humankind - A Hopeful History' by Rutger Bregman, which is full of proof that the average human being is much nicer than you might think. It's fascinating as well as reassuring.

This.

It’s just how life is - we did have a few decades of post war peace (although I doubt you’d have liked the 70s), the 90s were good - but overall human history is a shitstorm

This is true too

Still a shitstorm but less of a SS than previously

I have to say I agree with you OP and was having a similar conversation with my partner.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/millennials-gen-z-boomers-working-hours-compared-b2484624.html

This article in the Independent has a good view on it. Millennials went to work and the financial crash happened, it’s knocked our trajectory back. We’ve ended up working harder because of it and have less to show than those older than us.

As a child in the 80s I remember the doctor coming to my house when I was really sick. We had a large house on just my dad’s wage, which was the equivalent of only twice his annual salary to purchase. Holidays every year and 2 cars. We can’t achieve near that with 2 of us contributing, and I’m at the same level my dad was career wise. When my kids are sick, we end up at a walk in centre for several hours.

Probably seems worse as we have social media which didn’t exist before the 80’s. Back then, we just read about things in the paper or on the news. Now it’s just there in front of us 24/7.

The 90s were good, post Berlin wall, pre internet takeover, war not very close to the UK. The Manchester IRA bomb was the worst thing I can remember. Was Lockerbie in the 90s?

Mainly I was young and having fun! Is the decade you are a teen / early 20s always the best one?

@Outofideas79 you’re absolutely right but the gammon generation won’t agree with you as they like to think they were hard done by and the younger generations are soft. They forget that they took advantage of free university education, a working NHS, final salary pensions, mortgages that weren’t 10x multiple of their salary, and when it was possible for a family to get by on one wage. Now the country is broken and what do they do - vote for Brexit, ruin opportunities for younger people and complain their state pensions aren’t high enough. 🙄

@Outofideas79 I don’t agree with PPs saying that all decades are awful. I was born in the 70s and think that the 90s and early part of this century were fab. 2008 it started going down hill - and from 2010 it’s just been relentless.

Cant think what catastrophic event in 2010 heralded the last 14 years of shit 🙄

It certainly feels like that, OP, but I think that it’s because global media/social media has shrunk the world.
Nothing feels good at the moment and there’s a realisation, certainly with this government, that no one is listening to us. There’s no ‘joined up’ thinking at all - about immigration, the NHS, crime, childcare etc….
Honestly, a random donkey could run the government and country better than this shower - and I speak as a past conservative.

This is spot on. I don't read/listen to or watch any news at the weekend to get some perspective. The news depends on fear to keep us checking in but really our daily lives are so much easier than 100 years ago when there was no NHS or universal education.

Exactly this.

@Badgerandfox227 I was having this convo with a colleague earlier. When I was a kid and my Dad was on 40k and my Mum worked a couple of shifts per week, we had a 5 bedroom detached house. I think when we sold it in the late 90s it was worth 125k 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I think they paid 99k in 1990. I would imagine that same property is now worth well in excess of 750k.

As a child in the 80s I remember the doctor coming to my house when I was really sick. We had a large house on just my dad’s wage, which was the equivalent of only twice his annual salary to purchase. Holidays every year and 2 cars. We can’t achieve near that with 2 of us contributing, and I’m at the same level my dad was career wise. When my kids are sick, we end up at a walk in centre for several hours.

As a child of the 70s I can only remember once the doctor coming to our house. That was when my brother had his first asthma attack. He popped a head in, said "probably asthma, take him to hospital. The ambulance is busy, so you'll need to drive."
When ds (in around 2010) had chickenpox our GP popped in twice a day to check on him until he started getting better, and we've had a couple of other home visits.

My parents bought a house in the late 70s. They had to get 20% deposit, were only allowed to borrow up to 4x salary and then there were interest rates of 10-17% for almost the entire next 15 years. It was only in around 1994 that rates dropped below 10% and stayed. I remember wondering why the words "interest rises" led to them sitting at the kitchen table with calculators and worried faces. I only knew interest as free money the bank gave us twice a year at that age.

I'd say only half the people we knew had holidays once a year, the rest didn't holiday at all, and only one family through my childhood generally holidayed abroad. Most would do a couple of nights at a cheap local place at best.
The only families I knew with two cars, one of them was a work car. Even the very rich family we knew only had one. Most people only had one, that the dad took to work and the rest of the family walked.

And as for the walk in centre, that's roughly what we had growing up. If we were ill, then you had to join the queue at the doctors' centre at 8am as they didn't do appointments. They went through everyone there until they'd got down the list and then they did their home visits after that.
So if there weren't many people there, then they might have finished at 9am and all gone. So there were a couple of times I remember dm doing the school run first, and then taking me to the doctor - to find they'd finished and there was nothing they'd do about it. You had to wait for the next day unless they deemed you bad enough for a home visit (and even then they might say they were full). Or, if it was busy, on the other hand, on several occasions we were still waiting to see a doctor well after lunch time, and had been sitting in the waiting room all day before we saw the doctor.

I think you're looking back with rose tinted spectacles.

@MargaretThursday my mum, who is in chronic pain, asked to see a gp to manage her pain. They couldn't give her an appointment for over 2 months. That's not waiting until the afternoon. That's a disgrace. To suggest that the NHS isn't in a complete state of collapse or the worst state its been in decades (and the rest of the public sector for that matter) is frankly to be sticking your head in the sand.

It's always been like this. My parents lived through WWII, Dad was evacuated, Mum lived in Europe so was in occupied territory. After that was the rise of Communism, Iron Curtain, Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Partition, Vietnam, Korea, Middle East, civil wars in South America, Africa etc, Falklands, Nuclear crisis in the 80s, Gulf Wars 1 & 2, IRA, not to mention all the mad dictators, genocide and military coups. It is literally non stop and i haven't even touched the sides. And don't forget we are also busy wiping out other species and plants whilst we kill the planet. Humans, aren't we just great?

I remember having this convo with my parents a few years ago and it was the same for them back then but with different things (obvs covid aside - but then look at the Spanish flu pandemic hitting alongside WW1..)- I think it’s life really

Yep. Well worth a listen.

There's always been crap stuff happening. We are alot more informed on everything now via the internet; previous generations without such access to news would just have been more ignorant. Growing up in the 1980s: Aids epidemic with no treatment in sight, famine in Africa (which sparked Live Aid), the troubles (here in NI), half of Europe behind the Iron curtain (zero freedom, government surveillance... you also couldn't just pack up and go for a weekend to Prague, Budapest etc.), dictatorships in South America (the Argie fella who caused the Falklands war), Apartheid South Africa with Mandela behind bars, and on and on.

I'm 62 and work in NHS, medical professional. Apart from covid its same old, same old. Nothing new to see here.
There have been good things as well as bad, I re-mortgaged at 0.5 % for 5 years so my mortgage is rock bottom, bought and sold houses at the right time and made a lot of money.
You have to seize opportunities as they arise and make the best of it.
I remember Black Monday in 1987 when my mortgage went up to 15%. I was a single mum at the time and had just bought our first home and nearly lost it.
I had to take a second job as well as my full time job to make ends meet. I did that for many months until the interest rate came down, it was a nightmare.
I remember when it was really tough to get an NHS job and I was unemployed for 6 months again almost losing the house, now I could work anywhere I want.
OK the NHS is in a bit of a mess at the moment but my salary has gone up a lot and two pay rises.
There were wars and rumors of wars, cold war, constant threat of nuclear war, I don't think now is any worse tbh.
My DS now 40 doesn't earn a lot but has managed to save and buy his own home in Wales and has a permanent working from home job so can move anywhere in the country that he wants. That's quite a recent thing thanks to covid so he isn't stuck in the expensive south east. He's doing great.

Oh yes and so many of my friends died of AIDS, it was horrific.

Yes this.

I know people often mention the high mortgage rates in the 1990s which I completely agree were awful, but as this report looks into now, it’s much worse for the young people of today when comparable income is taken into account:

https://www.leedsbuildingsociety.co.uk/_resources/pdfs/press-pdfs/press-releases/housing-is-now-at-its-least-affordable.pdf