Labour supporters may be ignorant.

Was your mother a nurse and run a boarding house Jen?

Lemon, my mother was a nurse in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, retiring in 1982.
Does that cover it?

And of course we all know that the Tory Government manages the economy sooooo much better than a labour government ever could, so there should be plenty of cash slashing around for the NHS

And NHS hospitals being closed all over the place.

Weird, isn't it?

So there are more people in the UK now lemongrove therefore there are more people paying tax, people are also richer (there's always someone harping on about how bad things used to be) so people are paying more tax. There should be much more money available to the NHS. So the demands upon it should be met. They are not being. Why? Because there isn't the will to do so. There is no other logical reason.

We are talking about now versus the 1950’s durhamjen
Nothing to do with before the NHS.

I wasn't talking about carnivals, Annie. I was talking about everyday living, playing in playstreets after school.

My mother compared, lemon. She was a nurse before the |NHS and was so pleased that it had arrived, as her dad died in 1939 because they couldn't afford medication for him.
Going back to that now, people dying because they can't afford medication.

The carnivals in Tiger Bay were so different in the fifties and sixties to the carnivals in the rest if the country.

Only time one could see and hear steel bands and see all those colourful national costumes .

The NHS today is nothing like the NHS which existed in the 1950’s, not only are intolerable burdens placed upon it by sheer population nunbers but by all the specialist help it now offers.
Less people in the UK then and less available treatments available then.Stop comparing, it’s silly.

There are carnivals all over the U.K. you don’t have to live in Cardiff to enjoy it.

Thinking of past posts of your Jen I didn't think you lived in an area like Tiger Bay , you must have loved the carnivals etc.

So why did you query it?

Yes we had an area like the one you lived in Jen, Tiger Bay in Cardiff

Yes, Annie, immigrants in the 50s and 60s, living down my street, and even in my house. West Indians, Nigerians, on their own, in couples, even families. We even had a German family living in our house in the mid-fifties. Usually just for a year or so, until they had been given a council house, in the good old days. A very cosmopolitan group of children to play in the street with, and go to school with.

What’s the point you’re trying to make in your last post Annie, because it’s not clear at all?

Immigrants in the fifites and sixties? Where racist signs in windows was acceptable and legal , yes the windrush immigrants were needed, bus drivers, road cleaners etc.

I didn't grow up on a council estate, but I can remeber four families that I know of down our street where there were children and no father, another one where the father couldn't work because of war injuries, a woman across the road who had TB, and was bedridden and quite a few immigrants who worked on the buses and in the hospital.
We couldn't have coped without them in the fifties and sixties.

I grew up on a council esrtate too lemongrove I didn't know every family down my street. I do know that I went to a nursery school and that at least one of the children there was fathered by an American service man who had gone home.
As for NHS treatment, anti biotics were being used in the 50s to treat TB an illness that had until then been virtually untreatable. There were epidemics of polio, and children needed long and complicated treatment. The illnesses treated were different. Everyone agrees that people were much poorer and yet a free, comprehensive health service was offered. Why? Nothing to do with less demand, everything to do with the will to make it happen

The single parent families in those days were in the main war widows.

In the 1950s the demands on the NHS were much lower than they are now - antibiotics were only just being prescribed and there were none of the treatments for cancer, heart disease etc that we receive today.
I can still remember being prescribed a 'miracle drug' for tonsillitis when I was a child - M&B tablets.
Now people grumble if the doctor decides not to prescribe paracetamol when it can be bought cheaply over the counter!

Many people do expect to be prescribed a panacea for all ills and often do not look to help themselves in the first instance - that is why A&E departments are over-crowded and those with real or more urgent problems are forced to wait.

Not just houses, but hospital places, being able to see your doctor and getting places in schools for children.
Both Labour and Conservative governments have let us down badly with reckless immigration policies.

I grew up on a council estate trisher and on a very long road there wasn’t one single Mother family.No child in my class at school only had one parent either.
Things have changed completely since those days, marriage now ( before children) is not considered ‘the norm’.
Very few people now get married before the age of thirty, and they all need housing too.
Marriages break up at a higher rate too, so all those families need housing.
Add mass immigration into this mix and it’s easy to see why
There are not enough houses.

Just wanted to chip in here and say there's another big difference between now and after the war. Women no longer have to stay in bad or unhappy relationships. On one hand that's a good thing, but on the other hand a family split in two means two homes needed.

Even in the early years of the Right to Buy scheme, families could be rehoused by the council. Often the property would be a 'hard to let' property in a rough area, but it gave the family options even just as a stopgap. Sometimes councils would refer a family to a housing association who would help. These options have all but disappeared. Of course, social security might be available to help the family move or settle in and that's gone too. Rules about the number of people living in a property hardly exist and tenancies are allocated to families where boys and girls will share rooms no matter how old they are. New tenancies allocated now would not have happened before because of overcrowding rules.

The consequences of the Housing Act 1988 and the Right to Buy scheme means the rental market is unrecognisable now compared to 20 or 30 years ago. The balance swung from firmly in the tenants' court to firmly in the landlords' court. From what I have seen changes to the private rental sector are good if you have a good landlord, but have not made much difference to make tenants feel secure in their homes.

There were probably far more families with just a mother after the war than you realise lemongrove. Fathers had died and some women had babies out of wedlock. There were also families where the father was unable to work because of war injuries. Nursery schools opened to free women for munitions work stayed open until the 1950s to accommodate the children of these families. There was more free nursery provison then than at any time since.