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Post by Moose on Mar 14, 2015 21:52:38 GMT
If you read the comments section of some newspapers - cough cough - you could be forgiven for thinking that life in the fifties was the pinnacle of happiness and wonderful values and that we've descended into a moral cesspit ever since. I'd be interested to know if people believe that to be the case. Obviously I wasn't there at the time but nonetheless I think that there are modern conveniences that I would miss if I had to go back and live sixty years ago (obviously of course people at the time did not miss them because they did not know that they existed or ever would). Were people in general happier then? More moral? DId they work harder? I am quite sure that there was crime in the fifties too, and domestic violence, and child abuse. WEre those things more or less prevalent? If we could return to a fifties society, would any of you want to?
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Mar 15, 2015 9:25:27 GMT
Emphatically no!
The standard of housing for people in the social class I was born into was a disgrace. The idiots who want to return to the 50s have clearly never had to take a shit in an outside dry earth closet on a cold East Midlands November night.
A rigidly structured class system designed to keep scum like me firmly in place and deferential to our superiors.
People who eulogise about the 1950s never saw the poverty I grew up in
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Post by Kye on Mar 15, 2015 10:25:15 GMT
I wouldn't want to go back to the 50's. As a little girl, I was ostracised in my small town because my parents were divorced. Some kids weren't allowed to play with me. And I really wouldn't like to go back to a time without computers!
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Post by raspberrybullets on Mar 15, 2015 11:03:42 GMT
People always say things were better way back when - as if somehow crime and rape and violence only came into existance in the last couple of decades! At least now I have contact lenses and plumbing indoors and central heating. And at least now all those kids who got abused by their churches and schools are being listened to and believed. In the 1950s aboriginals weren't even considered people and couldn't vote!
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Post by Alvamiga on Mar 16, 2015 11:01:57 GMT
I really wouldn't like to go back to a time without computers! That's okay... they had computers in the 1950s!
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Post by spaceflower on Mar 16, 2015 16:12:33 GMT
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Post by Moose on Mar 16, 2015 17:52:34 GMT
YEs, i suspect that the people who think that life was better back then were from solidly middle class backgrounds with indoor plumbing and perhaps a television. Or they are just misremembering. To read some of the comments on the DM website you'd think that nothing bad ever happened at all before the Beatles released their first single. That's crap of course. The oft repeat phrase 'Britain's gone down the pan' or its variations really annoys me, because I simply don't think that Bad Things are a new innovation. As for so called 'VIctorian values' - that's a laugh. There was more squalour, degradation, drunkenness and relentless, grinding poverty in Victorian times than there is now. People either don't realise that a huge percentage of the population lived in terrible conditions, or they choose to ignore it.
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Post by tangent on Mar 16, 2015 20:05:41 GMT
There were some good and some bads things about the 1950s.
Pre-cooked packaged food hadn't arrived so we always had freshly cooked, nutritious meals at a price my mother could afford. My dad had a low paid job but it was enough to make sure we were properly fed. I never felt as though I was deprived even though some of my school friends were obviously better off.
I used to live in a council house with an outside toilet. Nevertheless, the conservative council in Sheffield ensured I received a first class education, which I wouldn't have had a few years later when a Labour council took over. My main gripe is that I went to a boys-only school, which was a cruel social punishment.
There were no inhibitions to playing outside the house, even when I was five years old. Social Services didn't have their grip on parents' behaviours.
RB is right in saying we have always had crime, rape and violence but sexual crimes were hushed up. Attitudes to child abuse were particularly bad. Even as late as 1990, you could make music hall jokes about child abuse and people would laugh at it - "the choir boys sang so badly they deserved it," said one comedian to a room full of laughter.
When I was 14, my English teacher was forced to leave the school because he had interfered with several of the boys. He was single and used to invite them up to his flat. But in 1958, he would not have been charged. He just moved on to another school. Parents didn't want a scandal, the school board didn't want a scandal, the local newspaper would never have published a scandal and he got away scot free. The headmaster's hands were tied. The scandal wasn't that he abused several boys, it was that the general public didn't want a scandal. A similar but much more serious incident occurred in the Isle of Wight in the 1980s, involving a number of young girls. It transpired that the school governor, the governor of the Isle of Wight and the local police all covered it up, presumably because the general public didn't want a scandal. Thank goodness we don't have those attitudes today.
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Post by Moose on Mar 16, 2015 20:26:09 GMT
Well to an extent we DO - think of the recent grooming scandals involving young girls and taxi drivers in Rotherham and other places. THough I think that the reasons for those being hushed up were possibly slightly different.
Kids where I live play out all the time - including some who I think are much too young to be out alone (under three years old).
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Post by tangent on Mar 16, 2015 20:52:22 GMT
Not so in Marple. For example, children under eight are not allowed out of school at the end of the day without being collected by a parent, and any parent who wants their child to walk home by themselves will be placed on a social services corrective training programme. Without going into details, I have actual knowledge of this sort of thing.
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Post by Moose on Mar 16, 2015 21:13:07 GMT
I have no idea whether kids are allowed to walk home from school alone here but that is not the same as playing out in the street
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Post by raspberrybullets on Mar 17, 2015 10:13:16 GMT
That sounds so bizarre! I have no idea if there are any such rules like that here.
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Post by Miisa on Mar 17, 2015 15:57:13 GMT
In the early 60's my mother had to take and fetch her girls from school in the UK. But they were quite young (about 5). Children here that age might play outside on their own, but probably not be allowed to leave the communal yard, cross roads, etc.
I have mentioned it before; the lack of visible children in the UK in public. When you do see them they are either in an enclosed schoolyard or with parents, and you can hear them in the closed-off yards of their houses. That just strikes me as odd. It took me a while to identify what subconsciously made me feel uneasy, but when I realized it, it was that it felt like the film Children of Men or something, no kids anywhere. But I don't know whether that is a more recent result of some 'stranger danger' ideas or if it is a longer-standing cultural difference, that perhaps unattended children are perceived as urchins or something.
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Post by juju on Mar 17, 2015 18:04:08 GMT
When I was growing up in the 70s everyone played outside and the streets were full of kids. Now I think it's become a class thing - children still play out in areas that are considered less 'desirable', but middle class suburban families don't tend to let their children out in the street. I'm guessing you were in the nicer areas when you were here, Miisa?
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Post by Miisa on Mar 17, 2015 18:16:19 GMT
Could be, North London mostly.
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Post by Moose on Mar 17, 2015 18:50:23 GMT
Heh I do not live in a 'nicer area'. Lots of kids here
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Post by tangent on Mar 18, 2015 1:57:33 GMT
In the early 60's my mother had to take and fetch her girls from school in the UK. But they were quite young (about 5). Children here that age might play outside on their own, but probably not be allowed to leave the communal yard, cross roads, etc. I went to school on my own when I was five, crossing three minor roads and a bus route. We had the first TV in the neighbourhood when I was five, and 15 of my school friends called round to watch it. No parents, just five year old school friends (possiby six year olds, I can't remember).
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Post by kingedmund on Apr 4, 2015 2:05:06 GMT
I really doubt life was better the 1950s? I sure wouldn't want to live back then!
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