So how much did it cost...

Generali

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Surely owning an iPhone doesn't take away the need for a landline.
Even wireless will need a line to the house as standard at the moment.

I used to use my iPhone tethered to my laptop to give me 3G wireless internet with no landline. I know plenty of people in Aus that either do that or use a 3G dongle.

Partly that reflects the rubbishness of Aussie internet however.

grizzly1911

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Surely owning an iPhone doesn't take away the need for a landline.
Even wireless will need a line to the house as standard at the moment.

I think that is part of the issue.

Back then you had one of things whereas today we take the one of things as granted and layer it up with modern stuff.

Things may be comparable in relative price but we have more of them.

If our phone was say £12 per month, late 80s, today we spend close to £100 per month. Again a family not an individual but we would still have only had one phone line had things remained the same.

The same has been said about electrical items and lights in the home in the 80s we would have been more content with a single 100W bulb whereas today we want designer lighting with 5 x the lighting although the output isn't much different. i.e. despite better technology we don't actually consume less.

Same goes far cars where our quest for more efficient cars hasn't led to us actually paying less, in relative terms, for the "weekly" fill up.

grizzly1911

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

remedy - have fewer children, and stop voting Labour who always encourage unfettered immigration to the UK.

That is one of the excuses used though, for unfettered immigration , that we need more earners paying tax to actually fund the previous and current.

Cutting childbirths potentially exasperates that issue in the future.

IveSeenTheLight

StevieJ wrote: »

I think many houses now have more TV sets than people, I counted 6 at my sisters the other week for 4 people :eek:

We have 1.
We used to have two (one in the living room and one in the kitchen) but didn't replace the 14" LCD when it died.

I refuse to get a TV in the bedroom and the kids won;t be getting one in their either.

I do have a large study / music / den room which has a sofa bed which I'll likely get a second telly for the kids to use on occasion.

DervProf

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Used to have a friend whose dad was a TV repair man.

They lived in a nice modern 4 bed detached house, in an upmarket area of town and he drove a nice Triumph 2000 estate with overdrive.

Sadly, I got into the trade just after the "boom time". Prices gradually dropped and the amount of £ that people were willing to spend on a repair fell. To make matters worse, the technology slowly got more complex, and the tools and knowledge required to repair some faults meant that it wasn't economical or even possible to do so.

Today, we live in more and more of a "throw away" world. If your telly, or other electronic item fails outside the guarantee period, it will quite often end up being replaced by a new item. The repair man's job has been replaced by a robot or someone in China churning out thousands of relatively cheap products. Not very "green" if you ask me.

FTBFun

ukcarper wrote: »

I don’t think you can dispute that most boomers were better of than their parents especially working class I was the first person to buy a house in my family. I also think that many people in their 30s are better off than their boomer parents mine are. I do worry for people in their teens and early 20s.

My dad was certainly better off than his dad. Mainly because he didn't spend a chunk of his early 20s getting shot at by the Japanese.

vivatifosi

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Yes, alongside the state pensions, the winter fuel allowances, the free bus passes and everything else you lot get that has to be funded by current workers who won't get them when they retire.

I don't understand who your argument is against here. If it is against the boomers, most of them haven't retired yet.

gravitytolls

A better idea of value of money would likely be cost of fags, beer and fuel.

ukcarper

gravitytolls wrote: »

A better idea of value of money would likely be cost of fags, beer and fuel.

I worked part time in a filling station in 1966 if I remember rightly 2* was 4s 10d a gallon.

According to the measuring worth website in 2010 the equivalent was £3.54 using RPI or £7.18 using earnings.

Generali

ukcarper wrote: »

I worked part time in a filling station in 1966 if I remember rightly 2* was 4s 10d a gallon.

According to the measuring worth website in 2010 the equivalent was £3.54 using RPI or £7.18 using earnings.

I remember queuing for petrol with my Dad (probably in 1978-9) during the mini oil crisis. I'm pretty sure the price was going up from 37p/gallon, less than 9p/litre.