Things ( utilities) that have got worse during your lifetime

Do you have landline phones there, or all mobiles?

We don't seem to get power cuts like we did when I was young.

All of the rest, though, sound just the same here as there.

I haven’t noticed the electricity or phone services having problems (but I’ll give them time). There’s plenty of parking locally, but the insidious “app only” payment can be a problem.

Friends have complained about the post, but it seems to be working well round here, touch wood. Health and public transport - yes, they’re bad compared to days gone by. Even when my children were young in the 80s, our GP would do house calls if necessary, and we could easily get same day appointments. These seem to be a thing of the past, in this area at least. And I feel that a lot of problems could be solved if only we had cheap and efficient public transport, but ours is just cut, and cut again. Hence the super-busy roads and declining footfall for businesses.

Our nearest big town has lost its two public swimming pools, and we’ve no library within walking distance, which is very sad. The two that have closed near us ran toddler story sessions, technology courses, reading groups, knit and natter, provided computers for those who didn’t have wifi at home. All gone now.

Building Societies, Banks and many other businesses no longer put a phone number on their
Headed paper.

Those that do put you on hold and play irritating music. Often you have to hold. Upwards of 20 minutes.it’s called progress 😂.
I. Never remember this when I was young plus you always spoke to a human being.

In many ways I think we have taken a backward step
MissAdventure

Being able to contact services without being twenty something in the queue. Speaking to a person when you need help or not being able to understand the person there to provide customer service

We used to be able to walk into the doctors ( a converted house in the High street) and wait our turn. Collect the medication out the back yard which was left unlocked in like a post box thing.
Our post is brilliant although I can remember when there were two deliveries a day.
We used to play games in the road in the avenue where we lived. Hardly a car to be seen.

One massive improvement is telephones. I remember that back in the sixties and seventies the cost of "long distance" calls was extortionate. Much later early dial up Internet was terrible. Not only could you only connect one computer but you couldn't use the phone at the same time and it was slow. And no wi-fi.

The post here is dire. They have cut it back to 2 deliveries per week but in actual fact it is just one where we live and has been for a year or two now. We live in the outer suburbs, not the bush and we are not remote or inaccessible. It would be quicker by horse. 🐎 Posting to the next suburb takes days. Pathetic.

You are right about the doctor. If you were ill you went to the surgery but had to sit in a crowded waiting room for hours sometimes.

There are no public toilets any more in my town of 20,000 people!

No public telephones either.

At the airport recently, returning from NZ having lost my mobile, I had to beg a stranger to ask if he could phone my friend to come and collect me.

Post arrives once a week in a bundle.
Birthday cards need to be posted a week in advance to UK and 2 weeks in advance to Europe. As for NZ, I rarely send anything now except emails.
In my youth there were 2 deliveries a day.
But ofcourse there was no internet.

The ubiquitous wheelie bins I find depressing. Each household has up to 4 bins and no provision for storage, so the pavements are permanently lined with them.

In my youth there wasn't so much packaging, milk bottles were delivered and collected. Most bottles were returnable.
Food waste was mostly composted. The dog had the scraps and the bones.

Cars are very big now and clog the roads. Most households have multiple cars.

Some things have improved but there's a downside.

Do you have those little green FOGO bins for kitchen waste? Some silly person invented those . They stink after a couple of days of hot weather and disintegrate when you remove them to put them in the green waste collection. All supposed to help the environment but more likely to give you stomach upsets because they are unhealthy . I notice the incidence of gastro is very high these days but they don’t make the connection.

Can people say where they are in the world please
I know Nanna8 is Australia but I don’t recognise where you are Grammaretto ( post arrives once a week in a bundle) surely not UK we certainly still have a daily delivery plus now they can collect your parcels to post at the door so I think a better service etc
I like the bins we have it’s pretty simple blue paper items, green garden waste and black rubbish we all put them out on the day at the back of our buildings unless there is no back way then they are only out front a day or less
My dislikes (Uk)
I don’t like the freedom of dogs in shops and cafes
I agree about lack of public toilets we aren’t too bad in my area but visiting some other areas it’s hard to find them
Too many cars on the road definitely
Too much back handers in planning etc ( maybe that’s always happened)
Far too much grumbling and negativity I heard yesterday that UK is second to bottom of the list for miserableness Uzbekistan is bottom That’s a terrible terrible statistic for UK

wonderful post Bluebelle, I agree with every word that you say, especially about the grumblers

Of the things that you mention, the postal service is the worst. Now, we are lucky to get even one delivery a day, it used to be two.
One of the things I miss is the gas and electric stores. These days, everything is done on-line or over the phone. It's so much better when you can consult someone face to face.
Efficiency has gone. Everything is so apathetic these days.

Curtsintwitcher why do you need two postal deliveries a day when hardly anyone uses the postal service I get a letter about once a month or birthdays and Christmas everything including bills is done online so what is there to moan about You want the postmen walking the beat with nothing in their bags !!! Or perhaps you want to go back to pre internet well sorry that train has left the station

We have lived in our current house for ten years and never had an electricity outage, the only outages I remember were in the 1980s. We have an excellent bus service three minutes walk away every 15 minutes. We seldom get any post because we do everything online. We use our mobiles, don’t use a land line. There is ample parking in our town centre. Our GP practice is very good, the last time DH was ill he was able to see a doctor the same day. So no, we don’t have any of those problems.

More and more shops are pushing self service onto us, particularly in airport shops. People are losing their livelihoods over this ‘progress’. No customer service anymore, especially if you want information on particular products before you buy. Public transport is run not for the passengers but for the paybacks to investors. Cutting of public toilets, waste bins, no provision made for lay-byes where travellers can take a break from travelling in a decent clean area with clean toilets. New housing estates popping up everywhere with no provision for playgrounds, doctors and schools.

I wish they would find funding to sort out the state of the roads, despite major flagship schemes still happening, even the motorways now have potholes on them, and driving conditions on minor roads are the worst I’ve ever known them, causing accidents (particularly for cyclists) and damaging our cars. . There are also more floods and landslides than ever, part of the reason for that is the lack of investment in drainage, and keeping drains unblocked.

I'm in Scotland BlueBelle. I realise nobody writes letters anymore but I am still suspicious that my mail comes only once a week!

The Royal Mail has a rule of not delivering only junk mail so I think mine gets saved up.

I have a compost caddy in the kitchen Nanna8 but its not hot here!

I have 3 bins. Blue for paper and plastic recycle, red bucket for bottles and black for everything else. But I can store them on my own property and bring them out on the day. There is no provision for people in flats.
I should be writing this to my councillors, not to you!!

I live in Oxfordshire.

Landlines replaced by VOIP 'you will not notice the difference' (BT) , in other words you will not notice that you have to buy new phones, cannot get the answerphone to work, cannot use it all over the house because in some area you are too far from where your internet connection is, calls get cut and you have to redial, sometimes you cannot get a connection, even though the internet is up and running.

Apart from those small items you really will not notice the difference.

Radio reception I am a Radio 4 listener. I prefer Long Wave, a good strong signal that can be heard anywhere in the house and garden. We are assured that FM and digital are so much better, so why will digital work at the front of the house but not the back? and FM work at the back of the house but not the front. carryig a radio round the house listening to a programme is impossible with digital and FM.

The NHS Do I need to say more? It has been reported this mornig that 10% of all elective surgery is paid for in private hospitals.

Contacting utility companies. Back in the 1980s-90s, when I worked for British Gas, you rang your local district office which had a small team of customer call staff. All calls were expected to be answered within 2 minutes. If the avarage went above that the District Manager would have it brought up at his annual assessment. It was all carefully monitored - I ran the monitoring service.
Postal Service read AliOxons saga of getting Royal Mail to deliver a new router for her computer. The cost of sending a letter or card is extrortionate. Birthday cards - first class need to be sent at least a week in advance.
Electicity is better. We no longer get regular power cuts some lasting 8 or 9 hours. However constantly needing to monitor different companies and their prices for the best deal.

Bluebelle corruption in local government is much less than it was. One area I lived in as a child/young woman (1950s60s) A prominent local estate agent wasa councillor, Alderman and Mayor and chaired the planning committee. He died a very wealthy man. His name was a byword, a long time afterwards.

Post arrives daily here in Bedfordshire and parcels by various couriers are usually on time.

Our transport system is good for the most part. I travel a lot by bus and train, and love the cycle path network we have here. I feel much safer cycling now than I did even just 10 years ago.

I am lucky that I have space to store bins and can move them easily. I can remember carrying the metal dustbin from the back yard each week. Though one bin a week was rarely full - where does all the waste come from?

My moans?
As alluded to above - the huge amount of packaging that seems to come even though I shop at markets etc as much as possible.

The motorway system which clogs up frequently, especially the pothole ridden M25.

MOnica - I now have a radio in each room! It's the time lapse between LW and FM that catches me out sometimes. Though it does mean that I can hear the answers to Vernon Kay's 10 to the top while OH is still listening to the question sometimes!

Less access to people- " you can find answers on our website online" : not always you telephone person! I think that the postal service is poor, and too expensive. Maybe the price means people don't use it. I wonder if a reduction might help? The trouble is, the lucrative parcel deliveries have been hived off to providers who see money to be made. These firms aren't interested in delivering birthday cards to rural Cumbria- no profit in that.
Public transport here is very good.

I live in Sussex

My biggest moan as far as utilities are concerned is

Water - sewerage and our seas and rivers. They are disgusting, and as far as I can see there is a lot of talk, higher bills but no action to repair a worsening problem. This means that our beaches have “do not swim” notices as well as our rivers, and wildlife is dying.

The next is the PO. I don’t think that there is a worse managed business. The staff are abysmally paid and treated (I watched a select committee on a fact finding mission) and the delivery is hit and miss at best.

Electricity - ours is entirely from renewable and although ludicrously expensive when compared to other countries, I can’t remember the last time we had a power cut.

Gas - see above except not renewable and contributing to the worlds pollution.

Telephone - Virgin - no issue except the price.

Pot holes - someone has wished the potholes a happy birthday by painting hearts and flowers around the ones outside of his house. But they are dangerous and cause a lot of expensive damage.

I think people moan, because as a rule when one is paying a high price for services etc you expect a high quality of service, but we are not getting what we are paying for.

We are not door mats and sit by and let them walk on us - we moan instead. But really action is what is needed.

I went into my bank HQ last week and it was a good experience.
My accounts were changed to give me better interest rates and it was good having everything explained face to face.

The local branch closed 2 years ago and I have been using online and mobile banking as best I can. Occasional cheques can be paid in at the post office. Our post office is excellent and very busy.

Does it truly save so much money closing our high streets?

I remember,in London, my mum used to go bananas if the bus was 5 minutes late! We’re lucky if they turn up here so most of us just rely on our own cars. The trains are slightly better, they usually turn up eventually.

We live in Hampshire, southern England.
Our electricity supply is better as the local sub station was upgraded about ten years ago.
Post is the same, less of it, but we see our postie about most days.
GP surgery has had to close its books to new patients, too many houses being built, not enough infrastructure, which brings me to roads. No provision for the new houses, existing roads are poor quality and often gridlocked, so although we have regular buses, they get held up.
We’ve just got back a local policeman after about twenty years without one.
I bank online, have been mobile phone only for 18 odd years and am a regular user of the internet for most shopping and admin.