Easier to be OS in the olden days?

[Deleted User]

Oh believe me there was no romance involved in post war life! We had enough to eat, just, we had coal to burn on the fire mostly, we had the leftovers from life and were grateful to have that much most days. We also had no transport, no expectations, not a lot of hope,not much money, very little slack in the day to day, hand to mouth living that we ALL had to put up with. I remember very well smogs, chilblains, bronchitis every winter and not many drugs to treat it with, the polio scare the mad scramble at jumble sales to find what was worth salvaging before someone else got it, oh no, no romance at all. What we DID have was shared experience as we were all in the same boat together and I honestly don't remember any resentment or feeling that life was treating us unfairly or that everyone was better off then we were. We just got on with life, there was no alternative and made the best of what we DID have with every ounce of our being.

Disposable income was an unknown concept in our circle, my father who had been an army Captain in the war was demobbed and came back to no jobs and no prospects. He found work as a labourer on a mushroom farm which was the only thing he could find, he was a highly trained engineer!!! He was taken on for the harvest and then shed, along with many other equally qualified men who all were competing for any scrap of a job that they could find! He subsequently heard of a new Oil Refinery being built some 15 miles away, on the marshes across a river and cycled that 15 miles each way doing shift work as a labourer for some 10 years until the building was complete and then because he was reliable was taken on to the Security for the site where he still cycled 15 miles each way on shift work until the firm started to run a bus that luckily picked up through our village. He did this in snow, hail, rain and summer heat and every other set of weather you can imagine because we had to have a wage coming in to keep the roof over our heads and there wasn't any alternative. ROMANTIC? oh no my dear, I've seen that poor man so exhausted he could barely stand up. stagger through the door, eat mechanically what was put in front of him, stagger up to his bed and get up 8 hours later to do it all over again, and again and again, no rose tinteds here!!!

lessonlearned

I can't say that I,ve enoticed any rose tinted spectacles on this thread, just a little bit of reminiscing and maybe just a tad nostalgic for some of the good things.

What good things .......well a childhood free from stress, and endless exam pressures, free from junk food and obesity, free from junk toys, free from early sexualisation.

I think the biggest losers today are children. .They just don't have the freedom to grow and express themselves, to use their imaginations and to develop skills.

Yes we played on bombsites and were often cold, the food was boring sometimes, and some parents may have been over strict but on the whole children had a better quality of life then than today's children.

Assuming we survived the killer childhood diseases such as polio and measles, and TB - my best friend died of diptheria when we were 7 and my little cousin succumbed to leukemia when she was just 2' then life was, by and large, much better for children than it is now.

It was the grown ups who struggled, life must have been one long hard slog for them. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be a grown up during the 50's.

nursemaggie

kboss, for some of us there is still no such thing as a disposable income. If I did not know how to eek out what bit we have we would starve.

My son is one one the youth unemployed. The only job he has ever been offered was for 2 hours a day. He would have to work 3 1/2 hours a day to pay the daily fare to work. Your very lucky to be able to get a temporary job. My son has been sanctiond for what amounts to going on a compulsory course he was sent on by the job centre. He was in a different place and unable to go to sign on. He informed them he was on the course and could not get to the job centre he was told he did not have to attend the job centre while on this course. It seems to make no difference he is guilty. I have to keep him on my pension even though it only £1 less than pension support. He is not entitled to anything because he lives at home.

The unemployed are treated with cruel and unreasonable rules they cannot keep and are vilified by the rest of society as scroungers. It makes me very angry.

Today's children are kept in virtual imprisonment. They do not socialise, they do not know how to play, it is unhealthy. They get everything they want but freedom and they will not know what to do with it when they get it. If they were adults there keepers would be put in prison. They are still bound by 4 walls at an age that my boundaries were kept by the clock not a geographical location.

Personally I would rather be a child in the 50s. My parents were very happy they had consideration for each other and respected us according to our age. They were married for 52 years.

nursemaggie

Yes it would be as a child I would not mind going back to the 50s. Working adults these days live in a fantasy world. Then suddenly their world comes tumbling down. The evidence is on these boards.

For those of us who are over 60 I think OP for starting this thread it has been wonderful and I hope it stays. I am sure Candlight, Lessonlearned, MrsLW, Jackie and any others I have missed will agree with me. I hope those from the 60 and 70s have enjoyed it too.

I think the 50s and 60s were a golden age. Suddenly there were council houses, we came from a 15th century house with a pump in the yard, each party outdid one another to build the most, welfare benefits and the NHS. Now the political parties out do one another to put down the unemployed, the sick and the disabled.

CRANKY40

The 70s and 80s weren't actually that great either. Power cuts, strikes....when my dad finally tried to claim some benefit after being on strike for so long that there was no money left he was asked by the woman at the social how much rent he charged my nana who was widowed and living with us. He was so disgusted at the concept of charging his own mother rent that he walked out without claiming anything and my mum had to go instead.

My dad is a marine engineer but ended up moving from the northern shipyard to working as a caretaker on a housing estate in London because the work was there. Such a waste of skills. He's retired now, but I'm 47 and the shipbuilding industry is only just starting to pick up here. We moved to London when I was 16. I remember being too scared to ask for anything at all for Christmas because I knew there was no money. My nana helped out by buying my clothes so my parents only had my sister to clothe. All our stuff was passed on to our younger cousins when we outgrew it.

My dad grew fruit and veg in the back garden, my mum found a part time job and when they were both working my nana looked after us so luckily we were never latch key kids like some of our friends. No, I don't think the 70s and early 80s were golden times either.

meritaten

I agree - I think Great Britain had just become civilised in the 50s and 60s with the general attitude to unemployment, the sick and disabled and pensioners - now where are we? back to the Victorian Age! Employers paying measly wages - the 'get out and get a job' stance - when there just is NO full time work to be had in many areas! the sick are paying for medicines because the state only provides so many medicines and if it isn't on the list - tough! and now they want to go back to the old days of always having to keep sixpence in the house 'for the doctor', just in case! and to be disabled............jeez that it becoming a real 'crime'! it saddens me.
yes the fifties could be hard - but the people weren't!

CRANKY40

I agree Meri, we're going backwards now. I've lost count of the number of food parcels I've made up for hungry people. Just the very basics (we have a community thing going on here and we help each other when we can). These are people that are working and don't qualify for food banks, people who have been 'sanctioned' and who have nothing to live on at all, people who have unexpectedly been given custody of children and have nothing to feed and clothe them with while the benefits they are entitled to are being processed.

candlelight_2013

ROMANTICISING I don't think so. Growing up in the 50s, and obviously decades later as well, was not romantic. I think we have all tried to give a true and honest picture of how life was when we were growing up, we remember our childhood, but we also remember how hard it was for our parents.

AS I said in one of my posts, I didn't think I was looking through rose tinted specs, and I think that is true. We have been remembering how our lives were and the question was, was it easier to be OS in the olden days. I think on the whole we all said we didn't know any different because everybody had to do the same.

Candlelightx

CRANKY40

I think that my answer to the original question then is that it is easy not to be OS during any time in history while money is plentiful in your househould. Some people were OS in spite of a decent income as they didn't believe in being wasteful and some people with a decent income now remain of the same opinion. Others are OS out of necessity. If you haven't got much money I doubt if it would be easier to be OS now or in the 1950s.

Supermarkets make it easier to obtain the tools of OS such as cheap oats, lentils and so on, but if you can't afford to buy them in the first place they make no difference.

lessonlearned

No the 70s and 80's weren't always easy either. And I agree it does seem that we are slipping back in some ways.

Wages are static or falling, there is no such thing as job security, assuming you can get a job, and there does seem to be a hardening of attitudes towards the sick and disabled.

Sometimes it does seem that it's now very much a dog eat dog world out there.

Victorian values?? Well it does sometimes seem that Darwin's teachings are to the forefront of political and economic policy.

Survival of the fittest and heaven help you if you lose your health or your livelihood. Don't see much "Dunkirk Spirit" sometimes either, especially among our younger folk.

The one thing that helped through all those dark times was community spirit, knowing your neighbours, the support of family, friends and neighbours.

That community spirit does seem to be a bit lacking sometimes. So many young people are isolated, living away from families not knowing anyone, not having anyone to turn to for support when the going gets rough.

Those support network are crucial but so,often our young people don't know how to form these networks, relying on either the State or proefessional advisers and just being left to muddle through, feeling that somehow they are abject failures because they don't have the glamourous lifestyles that they are constantly force fed by the media.

Poor Devils - I feel sorry for them.