Mumsnet race to the bottom

[limeandwater]

I have noticed on MN there has been a real race to the bottom mentality. To be clear I am not talking about budget advice threads that can be incredibly helpful.

I am talking about the posters that think working people should be so accepting of a miserable life.

Again I am not talking about 5 star holidays in The Maldives, 26 plate Range Rovers, or shopping at Harrods Food Hall.

Somebody posts about the price of coffee then the response is to make your own and bring it with you. Somebody posts about the price of a cafe lunch on a family day out and the response is bring your own sandwiches. Somebody posted about the cost of running a car and the answer is cycle. Like that's realistic in a rainy December.

When did people get so accepting that life had to be miserable?

That was me. Grew up in the 60s. No heating other than a coal fire. Very few clothes or stuff. Never ate in a restaurant until I was 18. Walked everywhere, admittedly it was a 40 minute walk to work not hours. I don't remember using buses except to travel to the next town.

Someone commented above that was was no awareness of different wealth because of no internet. It's absolutely true. Everyone I knew was the same, these were all working people but poor and perfectly accepting that that was normal.
It was only many, many years later that I realised how impoverished my childhood was.

That took a turn. There will be papers written on car ownership over time and average commuting distance and mode. In general, distance has increased. No more local jobs for local people.
4 hours walking a each day is an absolute outlier. An hour each way probably more frequent.

It was never normal. How many more times

This is definitely not normal 😆😆

What do you have against walking?

I challenged your assertion that a 3/4 walking commute was normal. This is not a reflection of my feelings about walking in general.

If I said I played tennis would that be believable

On the way to & from work?

I sometimes walk to work, about 40 mins. I think it’s a privilege

😆

You are very funny @Cuttingthroughredtape .

Depends on your priorities, OP

My packed lunches are awesome.
My legs and cardio health are amazing from commuting by bike (even in december).
I refuse to pay 4 quid for a cup of tea when I take the train for work trips.

The savings I make mean I only have to work 3 days per week and can spend more time hanging out with my dogs on the beach or in the mountains.

Race to the to top, IMO :)

Even better with a latte though. Priorities!

Weird how sarky little digs at people who aren't especially excited by takeout coffee or bought sandwiches aren't seen as judgy....

I'm not sure why people get so upset because you said people could walk miles to work, I often walked an hour to get to work, I had no busfare, that was in the late 60's and I lived in a city.

It's not a great stretch of the imagination (or use google) to think that a decade or so earlier, in a more rural area, someone could walk twice that distance to get to their employment.

Totally! A decent flat white would be up there if I could drink coffee after midday and still get a decent night's sleep!

@NovemberMorn a 4 hour round commute on foot was not the norm.

Was it unusual to walk 2 hours to work in the 1950's?
Walking 2 hours to work in the 1950s was not unusual, especially in rural areas where public transportation was limited. Many people commuted by foot or bicycle, and the average working week was longer than today's, often exceeding 40 hours. The work environment was often grueling, with long hours and little time off, but for many, the daily commute was a necessary part of their daily routine

Warnes, A. M. (1972). Estimates of journey-to-work distances from census statistics. Regional Studies , 6 (3), 315–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/09595237200185261
"Results from North West England show that the mean distance increased from 2·35 to 3·54 kilometers from 1921 to 1966 at an average annual rate of 0·9 per cent. These figures are compared with other regions."
That's from 1.5 to 2.2 miles. Easily under an hour.

As written in the above, so many things were different.
I hitchhiked all over the country, (for pleasure not work) something I would never encourage nowadays, the only dodgy character I ever encountered back then was a female driver.

That's mean, and pesumably North West includes a number of people in Manchester, Liverpool and other urban areas who travelled significantly less. It doesn't preclude some rural workers having longer journeys.

It doesn't preclude some rural workers having longer journeys

No one said otherwise, just that it wasn’t the norm.

If people have the time to read and post on this thread, they have the time to make their own coffee 😄

Exactly.
I am from Manchester, and have said I would often walk the hour into work back in the 60's.
A decade or so earlier, in a much more rural community, it's not hard to imagine the distance from home to work could have been twice as long.

I don't think the poster who originally mentioned this deserved the insults and the pile on she received.

Depends on the boundaries of "norm" doesn't it?

Could easily be the norm for a particular rural community.

commutes have increased over time.

@OooPourUsACupLove not when the poster said it was the norm for the silent & boomer generations. It wasn’t.

Obviously, because more people drive 🙄

Forgive me if I’m not impressed by Wise Old Owl as a reliable source of data.

YANBU

The Christmas threads are the worst I think. We aren't allowed any Christmas spirit because the fun sponges have a claxton go off at the whiff of tinsel and on they come with how terrible we are to stock fridges and buy presents. We should all just sit and cry and die a early death with worrying about the state of the world. Then there's the parents who come onto every single Christmas thread saying presents are absolutely ridiculous and there children are working in a soup kitchen on Christmas day and getting one book from the charity shop.

Honestly in years to come therapy is going to be booming in business with these kids.

I'm sure therapy will be booming for the kids of today but it won't be because they received only one present and helped a soup kitchen at Xmas. . .