Born in 1947, benefitted from the NHS and grammar schools.
Throughout my school years everyone seemed to come from similar backgrounds - middle class I suppose. I and my siblings had an enjoyable time - we were able to roam freely and without fear. There was little mention of strange danger; just don't take lifts or sweets from strangers. If we went out for an adventure we were told to be back by a certain time and we were.
I moved to London in 1966 when it was easy to find a flat to rent, grim as they were. It was also easy to move from job to job. Womens' Lib came into being and life was pretty good for me and my friends and acquaintances.
I didn't want to go to Uni, despite the protestations of my Dad who worked at UCL. I just wanted to earn my own money and have a good time. Both of which I did.
I met my future DH when I was 21 and together we went to many music events. I had started when I was at school, seeing Bob Dylan at the Albert Hall and the Tamla Motown Road Show amongst many. In fact it's easier for me to say whom I did not see rather than list those that I did.
There were dozens of venues, often attached to a pub where entry was often free but the price of drinks was higher.
We did not buy a house until we were 32 and that was only because my GM had died and I borrowed 1/2 the deposit from my Dad. The other 1/2 came from my tax savings (I was self employed at that time). Yet young people (sometimes in their early 20s) today bemoan the fact that they cannot buy a house.
By choice we are child free. Had we had children neither of us could have worked as we did. My DH was self employed from the age of 21 and I had a mixture of employment an SE. I was not particularly ambitious and only changed job when I go bored. That was until we moved to Suffolk and my job moved to Milton Keynes.
I am content with my life. We have a nice house with lots of art works which have been acquired during many years of jumble sales and car boots. We are not rich and don't have good pensions which is why I continue to work. Luckily I enjoy and have had some of my clients for more than 40 years.
Every now and then I wonder what the grown up children of our friends think about the current situation in the world, especially because most of them have children of their own.
There are wars everywhere it seems - Ukraine, Middle East and threats from Russia and China and atrocities on all continents.
The mass of people are discontented and who can blame them? Their discontent has brought about the rise of the extreme right the world over. There are atrocities everywhere. The MRC Militia, with the aid of thousands of soldiers from Rwanda are raping women and executing young children. Mass graves have been found in Syria. The list goes on.
We mustn't forget global warming and the destruction of the rain forests.
So my question is, what do you think will happen in the future and does it worry you for your children and, more importantly perhaps, for your grandchildren?
The biosphere as we know it will very soon collapse, a matter of a few years now. Our only hope is in new technology.
Meanwhile politics world wide is showing a trend towards the right and even dictatorships with accompanying atrocities.
Caleo- our only hope is in each other and ourselves. Cup at least half full always and at this time of year at least threecquarters
Information obtained on Google for anyone to see.
Don't shoot the messenger!
The number of Sharia councils in the UK has been growing, and there are concerns about the impact of Sharia law on Muslim women and other rights:
Number of councils
There are no reliable statistics on the number of Sharia councils in England and Wales, but estimates range from 80–85
"Caleo- our only hope is in each other and ourselves. Cup at least half full always and at this time of year at least threecquarters"
For the next few years maybe but when the crunch comes it will be every man for himself and his immediate family.
Iam64
My grandmother, born 1901, was always complaining that things were so much better in her young day and that the world was going to hell in a handcart. She died in 1976. Since she grew up with 11 children and 2 adults in a two roomed tenement flat and lived through poverty and two world wars, I am not sure about her judgement. Having been subjected to her doom and gloom take on modern life, I was determined that I would not repeat the pattern of being an old misery to my young family members. Bluebell's post about selective memories is spot on. Life will go on for our descendents because they will deal with whatever life throws at them as we have had to so I am not worried about the future of the UK or the World. It will just be different.
CariadAgain
One thing that's been overlooked by those of a more "positive" take on things - or rather two.
The "Covid" Lockdown - when, afaik, I don't think Britain got "locked down" for literally centuries before that. That's one of the downsides of the Internet - as in They wouldnt have been able to stage a Lockdown if we hadn't had the Internet. Then the Covid Jabs coming along shortly after that started up - and people are still having "sudden deaths" and illness from them ever since.
Neither of those two types of things happened in anything remotely like our lifetime - until 2020. So yep....the evidence life has become noticeably worse than it was for quite some time before....
I did read exactly which "plague" type illnesses came along just in my lifetime alone - and there were 4 or 5 - but the difference was there wasn't a Lockdown for any of them (ie because there wasn't an Internet then and there wasn't such a culture of "work or shirk" from home then - as jobs didn't lend themselves to it). Some worked - but a lot did shirk.
As someone who WFH before, during and after lockdown, I find your “shirk” remark really patronising, offensive and inaccurate, imo, those few (not many) who did “shirk” are those who same people that when in their offices etc. “shirk” there just as much!
Iam64
Well said Dickens. In my work, it was accepted that some tasks were more easily completed at home. We shared offices, writing detailed histories or reports in the middle of a busy office was less efficient than doing that from home, 20/30 years ago.
Plus carriadagain - your conspiracy theories on covid vax aren’t supported by the evidence
Plus carriadagain - your conspiracy theories on covid vax aren’t supported by the evidence
There's a whole heap of fact-checked evidence to debunk the conspiracy theories Iam64, but it's a slog and doesn't have the appeal of short, 'catchy' phraseology that conspiracy theorists like to latch on to, generally speaking. So might be ignored.
www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-no-evidence-excess-deaths-linked-to-vaccines-contrary-to-claims-online/
Caleo
The biosphere as we know it will very soon collapse, a matter of a few years now. Our only hope is in new technology.
Meanwhile politics world wide is showing a trend towards the right and even dictatorships with accompanying atrocities.
You are correct, Caleo. We are burying our heads in the sand while we destroy the environment. As you say, unless science comes up with something fast there’s no hope for humans. The planet will of course carry on without us.
Cossy
As someone who WFH before, during and after lockdown, I find your “shirk” remark really patronising, offensive and inaccurate, imo, those few (not many) who did “shirk” are those who same people that when in their offices etc. “shirk” there just as much!
It's odd isn't it!
Successive governments - business and industry - have historically been demanding a more 'flexible' labour force. Where they can impose zero-hour contracts, employing multiple people because it's cheaper than employing 1 or 2 full time - even fire-and-hire at will.
And yet, when that flexibility extends in favour of WFH for employees - people are up in arms against it.
It's an inevitable progression of modern technology in the world of work.
And with jam-packed roads and motorways, diminishing public transport - expensive to boot - why would anyone logically be against WFH if it suits the employer?
I remember all those things but wasn't around for either of the 2 world wars, obviously. However, with modern technology, weaponry, transport methods and the internet things are very different now.
There is so much information available, much of it fake, for people to read and believe.
So many things forgotten
Have we all forgotten the ‘fear of AIDS’ years, even adverts on tv about knowing who you had in your bed some people wouldn’t drink out of others cups or shake hands and people thought it would end the world ! Those theories went on for some years
I think Cariadagain has many conspiracies going on in her head I remember all her threads about lots of people stealing off her
Iam64 I agree with you about grammar schools.
I had the sort of brain that could work through the 11 plus papers quickly and correctly so I was lucky. My brain was also good in completing the psychometric tests when applying for a job in my early 30s. Faced with the similar tests in my early 50s I could not complete them. Brain too slow in some aspects.
However, I knew many children who should have been able to get to grammar school but couldn't deal with the tests and that is why I think that system of selection was bad.
TerriT
I can’t believe anyone can state life here was ok until 1990? They must have been in a deep sleep! We left for the USA in 1977 and couldn’t wait to go. There was endless strikes, you name the industry and it was striking. And then the miners strikes continued with all the violence. And the bombs and misery on Northern Ireland. I could go on and on. We could only stay in the USA for three years as it was a job transfer and we returned to a country that still seemed to be heading for the rocks! So no I don’t worry about my children and my grandchildren’s future here, worrying never changed anything.
Not everyone was affected by the strikes. I was working in the West End during the power cuts. we worked by candle light - no laptops or desktops then, just ledgers. we used to buy bottles of whisky using our petty cash and had a camping stove to boil water. It wasn't so bad.
joannapiano
I grew up in the 50’s, in a three bedroom rented house, with two families and my Nan, no bathroom and an outside toilet. Heating was one coal fire. Bullying father.
Life is so much better for my grandchildren, the girls in particular have many more opportunities.
I think the world has always had various conflicts, dating back to the Stone Age probably.
Not sure exactly when the Stone Age was but archaeologists have been unearthing structures from civilisations which existed thousands of years ago. One good example is Gobekli Tepe in Turkey which was founded 11,500 years ago. And there are many other sites in Turkey and other countries in that region and in south America. They have all disappeared.
NotSpaghetti
Dinahmo I think you are maybe forgetting the conflicts - I can't even describe the anxiety I felt for my children during the cold war.
That cast an enormous shadow over my life and my continued respect for the women of Greenham Common (remember ^Women for Life on Earth) - who led the protest against having American Cruise missiles here on our soil in the UK is real and sincere.
Don't you remember the apartheid struggles in South Africa and the thousands of us that protested/boycotted/wrote letters/saw our MPs to campaign for change?
And then the wars in Afghanistan...
As I said above, I'm not forgetting those conflicts. Many of them were caused by invaders. Today, I'm more concerned with the rise of the populist right in Europe and the US.
“Not everyone was affected by the strikes. I was working in the West End during the power cuts. we worked by candle light - no laptops or desktops then, just ledgers. we used to buy bottles of whisky using our petty cash and had a camping stove to boil water. It wasn't so bad.”
That can’t be right Dinahmo! I was working my first secretarial job with electric typewriters and we had to make sure all letters were typed before the power went off each day.
This was in north Wales…they must have been used in most offices in London long before that!
I think Russia and China present a huge threat to world peace, particularly the latter spreading its tentacles far and wide by stealth. They're omnipresent in everything we buy, they're all over social media,with spies everywhere. I believe The US is banning Tik Tok, possibly there are worth while things on its platform, but it does seem to have a pernicious effect on the young, I believe what they put out to their young people is entirely different, far less dumbing down, more educational. Every damn thing we buy seems to have been manufactured in China, even John Lewis for heaven's sake umpteen Chinese manufactured goods. Soon they'll be flooding us even more with their cheap EVs. Having almost certainly given the world Covid, the general consensus now seems to be it escaped from one of their labs, we then found ourselves boosting their economy even more by buying their sub standard PPE. WHO are more or less in their pockets so expecting any impartiality from them is unlikely. Now we have Shein and Temu pushing their products here evading paying their fair share of Corporation Tax, yes they're not the first, Amazon and the rest of the big tech organisations set those standards or lack of them, they have a massive unfair advantage over small business Never mind also that Shein are completely unethical as far as how they treat their indentured slave like workforce drawn from the oppressed Uigers and other political dissidents, but then China's businesses are all state owned so the state can impose whatever they like. RR nevertheless seems to think its worth forging ahead in allowing them to trade here with impunity her Campaign Adviser helping the Shein Chief set up treasury access, and the possibility of them listing on the London Stock Exchange, something the US has rejected. Meanwhile with an eye to Taiwan they're building warships at a rate of knots. Whilst Ed Milliband is blindly forging ahead with what many consider unachievable green energy initiatives that will levy unaffordable costs on the consumer to reach net zero by 2030, simultaneously China the world's largest consumer of coal and has the most coal fired plants in the world responsible for 35% of the world's emissions, kind of negate's all of Ed's efforts, but ah yes but we have to set an example!
Pantglas2
“Not everyone was affected by the strikes. I was working in the West End during the power cuts. we worked by candle light - no laptops or desktops then, just ledgers. we used to buy bottles of whisky using our petty cash and had a camping stove to boil water. It wasn't so bad.”
That can’t be right Dinahmo! I was working my first secretarial job with electric typewriters and we had to make sure all letters were typed before the power went off each day.
This was in north Wales…they must have been used in most offices in London long before that!
It was an antiquarian book dealers. We didn't have such things as electric typewriters. I had an Olivetti add listing machine and that was it.
It was the 3 day week but, like many other businesses we continued to work through the power cuts.
Dinahmo lots of us are concerned about the rise of the far right, about fake stories purporting to be "news" and so on but my reply was just in response to your OP where you seemed to be saying that you thought things were better "in our day" as the negatives you outline were fairly minor - flats being rather grim and you not being able to buy a property until you were 32 for example.
I was saying that I remember times being scary and dangerous. I wasn't aware of global warming (which i think is todays biggest long term threat) but as others have said, globally there were a lot of terrible things happening.
I tried to explain that the fear during cold war was a constant hum as I raised my family. That I was very aware of the danger of allowing a hawkish USA to put weapons on our land. I was trying to say that some people have always seen danger not far away.
Biafra (where starvation was used as a weapon), Vietnam, the Cambodian Civil War (and Khmer Rouge famine),
Darfur, the Korean War, Anglo Egyptian War, the Suez crisis... let alone the "Troubles" and the Falklands - all these are relatively recent issues/wars/disasters.
There wete a fair share of "natural" disasters at home and abroad. Aberfan springs to mind and disasters caused by industry such as the Santa Barbara Disaster, the Stern factory fire (which I think was in Glasgow).
There was never really "peace" in my opinion - and whilst some of these impinged on my life much more than others you can't help but be aware of them and the strife of others.
If I've misunderstood what you were saying, please could you explain.
I think there is always something dreadful going on somewhere.
Thank you.
There was never really "peace" in my opinion - and whilst some of these impinged on my life much more than others you can't help but be aware of them and the strife of others.
There have been few periods of peace in our lifetimes.
The Middle East has often been the area with conflicts, as now.
Some of us have not forgotten the Lebanese civil war and the Beirut hostages. Hundreds of foreign nationals were killed there too.
NotSpaghetti
My original piece was primarily about my own life rather than a discourse about the state of the world since 1947. From my point of view it was relatively easy. I think that you must be older me since you were raising a family during the cold war.
Of course I can remember all those things and the strife of others. As a child I heard about the cold war and the Cuba crisis etc etc but, being a child they didn't mean a great deal to me.
I remember doing my homework at the kitchen table when the news of Kennedy's shooting was announced. I was 16 at the time.
When I was a child we did not have a tv until, briefly, in 1959 and then again in 1963 or 64. There were not the news channels that we have today. My father read the Telegraph. My interest as a young teen was in magazines like Honey, not in newspapers.
I started getting interested in politics when I was about 17 or 18 and I joined the YCs- suppsed to be good for meeting young people. Edward Gardner was the MP at that time. My opinions changed once I started working in London and reading a broadsheet on the commuter trains.
I remember footage of the riots in America against the Vietnam War and how appalling the police and the National Guard behaved. I also remember demonstrating in London in 1967 against that war.
The sister of one of our friends was injured by an IRA bomb going off in a pillar box near Piccadilly Circus. I remember being very watchful on the tube for bombs. The cleaners of the tube trains found bombs. Between 1972 and 1976 hundreds of IRA bombs were exploded throughout the country as well as in London.
And the list could go on but I won't bore you with it.
So, Are you worried for the future of GB and indeed the world?
Just wondering.
I feel a bit like the OP. Maybe it is my age.
Not worried about Sharia law! or, acutely, immigration although we need to keep a handle on that in an increasingly volatile & mobile world.
I do feel sad about global warming & also I really distrust AI & drones & the "genie out of the box" that is the internet. I know I'm on it, but if I could wave a magic wand....
I feel UK is losing its way, very gradually, but like David said the rich have become richer & the poor have become poorer & that is bad for the country & no-one accepts that any more.
Only things with people I know get me down though.
Smileless2012
No, I'm not worried either; what's the point? I agree Norah it will be what it will be.
I could list worries about the future, but they will happen or not regardless of my worrying.
Present day worries are quite enough to be going on with.
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