The "good old days"

[Slatterna]

Ended up having yet another 'discussion' tonight with my mum who voted leave (as did my dad).

I was telling her why I'm scared and worried about the future and she just kept going on about how her parents and granddad had lived during the war and they didn't have much to eat but they made do with what they had and blah blah. And how they didn't have much heating. I'm not even sure what she was getting at but I asked her if she was wanting to go back to those days. She said they were happy.

She then went on to complain about "those things" (I was holding my mobile phone at the time) and other "gadgets" that we have now so I said, what has that got to do with the EU?! "Life was much better before we had all that!" was her answer. So let's stop progress and go back to when we were all poorer, less healthy and with less opportunities. Great.

The good old days were shit. Everywhere stank and predators were free to abuse women and children as they pleased.

Teachers hit kids and nobody said anything.

I remember children with holes in their shoes and crying with hunger. Mind you that's still going on.

Welcome to Geezer land!

I have noticed people roughly my age or slightly older have a tendency to talk down to younger people. They were stronger, faster, worked harder, lasted longer, took fewer breaks, etc back in the day.

It becomes worse if they are retired with decent money and don't actually have to go out and prove their rather outlandish claims.

The roofer ( I guess he was close to 40 ) who put on my roof had to listen to one of my neighbors who was a retired roofer speak loudly to me about how slow my roofer was, it was taking him weeks to put on my roof whereas my neighbor said rather loudly he could have got it all done in a few days.

The difference was it takes a good bit longer to put on shingles than a metal roof. My roofer had to cut through about 3 to 4 layers of tar paper, it was winter and when it wasn't raining there was frost buildup on the roof making it too dangerous to work.

My retired neighbor refuted me when I said well my roofer had several layers of tar paper to dig through. No, he said, that would never happen. I checked out several roofing forums and yes, sometimes they have to cut through several layers of tar paper which greatly slowed them down.

My own mother had a similar attitude, she thought that at her age of 82 she could go out and get any job she wanted without much difficulty. Sorry, but most businesses are not going to hire an 82 year old.

You are not a punk because you are young nor are you a geezer because you are elderly. You are only these things if you have a bad attitude. I apologized to my roofer for having to hear my neighbors diatribe against him.

When anyone glorifies the past especially the 1960's and 1970's in the days before joining the EU I show them the photos of the brilliantly talented photographer Nick Hedges. Just google him. His photography is amazing.

What some people don't understand is that there is a small but influential group of politicians and backers who see greater disparity as inevitable and acceptable. There is a ruthless survival of the fittest belief underlying their whole philosophy- they really don't care. And Brexit is giving them an excuse to deliver more austerity.

http://england.shelter.org.uk/shelter50??_ga=1.254905608.1245438734.1455100394

I'm old (for MN) and remember the good old days. They were grim for adults and relatively fun for kids. This is how "days" are . Old or otherwise. Anyone who is old was a kid in these alleged good old days and in no position to make a fair judgment. My grandparents, born over a hundred years ago said the same to my parents who were born in tbe 1920s and 1930s. I grew up watching wartime heroics in black and white films and, until my parents actually discussed it frankly with me, could have kidded myself that things were golden "back then".
Stupid childish nonsense.
My mum voted Remain before she died in her late 80s.

Sorry but I think that it's awful that people miss the war. I hope that what they actually miss is being young and having an important aim in life . Because missing the country being at war would quite frankly sick and disturbing.

Sorry but I think it's awful that people miss the war

Yes I'd never actually thought of it in exactly this way before as my parents were always nostalgic for the war. As it's been Holocaust Remembrance Day let's remember. In just 4 years between 1941 and 1945 seventeen million people were killed.

As well as 'exterminating' Jewish men and women and children other people murdered included Roma, Polish, disabled and ill people, gay people and Jehovahs Witnesses too. As well as the military of all nations who died during service.
17 million civilian deaths is 11,600 people per day. Just because the U.K. was part of the alliance that finally stopped it - does not mean that it's ok to say anyone ' misses' it.

On this continent we need to be part of a peaceful union trading and working things out together.

I an confirm much of what bellinsurge says, being I think a bit older than her. It seemed better for kids - we were left to play more.

The baby boom meant that quite a few of us had schools in new buildings - both DH and I did, in very different parts of the country - we both remember a spell in an old Victorian building and then in nice modern ones. In his, each classroom had a piano - I don't remember that, but each classroom had a well stocked storeroom. But - education was so sexist - boys did this and girls did that - usually the less exciting stuff and the 11+ was rigged to hold girls back because girls tended to outperform boys at that age. There were also plenty of parents who wouldn't let a clever girl go to the grammar school - a waste of money, she'd only get married.

But then, and this may just have been my own family - food was extremely monotonous. Now that might have been because my mother hated cooking, but I don't think that explained it all - there seemed to be an explosion of new foodstuffs in about 1960.

As for the war - it depended where you were and what you did. Both DM and MIL got good quality war work which wouldn't have been opened to them without a war. DF and FIL were both in reserved occupations, but were both in areas subject to heavy bombing. They talked about looting of bombed properties, and people losing everything.

Being a teenager in the sixties was fun though - mini skirts, bright colours, pop concerts.

Sorry but I think it's awful that people miss the war

What MIL gained was the camaraderie of wartime war work and a decent wage - with her DF having been in and out of work during the 30s and starvation being a constant threat.

With the Hunger Games experiment of No Deal we'll all have a chance to pull together . Self inflicted stupid bollocks.

Such a load of twaddle gets written here. But. Life in the 60's and 70's was better, yes there was poverty but so there is today. But the country was booming after the deprivations of the war. As for technology, in some ways we were better off without mobiles eg, st least people spoke to one another, walked without looking down st their phone etc.

What MIL gained was the camaraderie of wartime war work and a decent wage

Yes but it's the ultimate in a parochial, small minded attitude really isn't it? To evaluate the 'good old days' by what any one individual experienced; rather than evaluating those days by including the ultimate price paid by millions and millions of men, women and children across the country, continent and world as a whole.

It was not better LadyKalla.
It is also rude to dismiss other people's views as twaddle. We can agree on one thing, there is poverty here too. And the 2016 referendum has given successive governments the perfect excuse to allow that poverty to continue for decades...

Before you glorify the 60's and 70's Did you actually look at these photographs?

<a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=england.shelter.org.uk/shelter_50?_ga=1.254905608.1245438734.1455100394" target="blank">http://england.shelter.org.uk/shelter50??<a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=england.shelter.org.uk/shelter_50?_ga=1.254905608.1245438734.1455100394" target="_blank">ga=1.254905608.1245438734.1455100394

But. Life in the 60's and 70's was better,

Well surely that depends who you were doesn't it? For example, it probably wasn't better if you were gay, or BAME family being subjected to constant racism including on mainstream telly, or a child being abused because there's zero safeguarding procedures in place and no one would even think to believe you anyway, or a woman who is being raped by her husband and its perfectly legal, or a woman who couldn't get an abortion and... I could go on here couldn't I?

Life in the 60's and 70's was better

Not in my experience, and I was 15 in 1970.

Define "better ". Yes I had a lovely childhood in the 60s and 70s because my parents worked their arses off and had no end of struggles that I only learned about later.
I hope your kids have a lovely childhood too. It's our job as parents.
But to take from that the notion that back then was fabulous is just stupid.

@LadyKalila

Life was different in the 50s 60s and 70s, that is all.

Was it better? in someways, yes, as a child it could be adventurous! certainly most parents didn't have the control over their kids they've got now, we could go anywhere and trusted everyone, which is why Saville, Priests etc got away with their crimes.
TB, Polio, Rickets, Measles etc common place as was the number of people inc children killed in road accidents, 7,995 people killed in 1966 (7500 in 1970) it was 1793 in 2017.

Some older people hark back to the past because that is all they have, they feel they have little to look forward too and resent the young, their dreams and aspiration, hence the name calling ie Snowflake.

I'll take someone seriously about the "life was better before the EU" when they volunteer for a bout of smallpox, with only the medical interventions available pre-1970.

Because otherwise what they really mean is some combination of "I was a kid and all I remember was playing, and my parents would have sheltered me from the really hard stuff" or "I was younger and slimmer and everything on my body was a couple of inches higher up and didn't flap about when I moved" or "I was allowed to be abusive to gay people and ethnic minorities, and everyone thought this was fine" or most likely "I'm selectively remembering good stuff from the past and blocking out bad stuff, because that's just what most humans do in order to keep functioning."

Was it better? in someways, yes, as a child it could be adventurous! certainly most parents didn't have the control over their kids they've got now, we could go anywhere and trusted everyone, which is why Saville, Priests etc got away with their crimes.

Exactly.

Also, health safety. MIL always goes on about how car seats are so ridiculous and complicated these days, and how there was no such thing as car seats when DH was a baby and he is still alive blah blah blah and we always quietly point out that, despite there being far less cars on the road, more people died in road accidents back then, including kids and babies, but she won't have it that anything bad happened in the 60s and 70s!

And more people died in horrible industrial accidents because health and safety was so lax.

All these damn EU regulations, keeping us safe, stopping us from meeting a horrible end!

I think Baby Boomers just find it hard to accept they will never be young again. They don't want to live like people their age (70 or so) did in the 60s and 70s, they want to be young again in the 60s and 70s. It is impossible.

To be fair to my MIL, she doesn't go on about how the war years were better, but does talk about how she enjoyed the factory work, having lived a very restricted and sheltered life before then.

That is applicable to some baby boomers. Just as with younger people there is a range of views. My Remain voting mum died just after the referendum in her 80s. My Remain voting in-laws are baby boomers and are as horrified as the rest of the Remain vote by this bollocks.
My leave voting nephew is a late 20s educated well read well travelled professional.

I remember the 70s, kids were free to run around and avoid the 'strange man' who touched you. We could buy cigs and fireworks. Swim in the sea alongside turds and not bother with seatbelts.

Ahh the good old days.

I remember the 70s, kids were free to run around and avoid the 'strange man'

I was always told to avoid men wearing raincoats

Sounds like my DM. Leave voter, anti-tech, harks back to the 'good old days'. It makes me furious that she (and many others, though obviously not all leave voters) appear to have voted leave as a way to vent their general discontent at 'how the world is these days', without considering that none of the things they are grumpy about actually have anything to do with the EU.

Wrong time/place/planet to discuss it but why should 'men' have to put up with women prancing about practically naked at the beach?
Particularly if they then get arsey because a 'man' looked at them.