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Big changes in your lifetime?

White (tooth coloured) fillings.
No need to buy a ball-pen as they arrive through the post from charities, the pools etc. and are given away in most hotels.
No need to buy rubber bands as the postman drops them in the street.
Abolition of the death penalty in UK (I was born 1954).
Car reliability - when I was a kid the roadside would be littered with steaming cars with their bonnets raised.
Chicken now eaten more frequently than ‘special’ Sundays.
TV that doesn’t make you think you need specs.
Buses are almost empty.
Seatbelts compulsory.
The breathalyser.
Brylcreem seems to have vanished.
Everyone has a barbecue.
 
I was born in 1949.. the same year as the 45 r.p.m. single.. but I didn't see one until the mid 1950s.
Jet propulsion was standard for military aircraft and Rover were developing a jet 'turbine' car.
Most railway locomotives were 'steam'.. and we loved them.
Most domestic radios were 'valve'. All TVs were 'valve'
By the early 1960s we had 'transistors', but something told me a valve amped Dansette was superior.
I used a slide rule in school and struggled with it.
In my first decent job I used 'FACIT' hand cranked calculating machines.
At university as a mature student in the 80s, I used 'Banda' copying machines.. we had to approach 'da management' to ask for some input on 'computers'. All of my assignments and essays were submitted in handwriting, except for my dissertation.. which was tediously typed by me on a small portable machine, then copied by a local company.. at some expense..
'Digital'... and 'Turbo' were yet to come.
 
For me it is the cellphone and being available all the time, we did not even have a fixed line phone when I was a kid. You could be out of contact in a big city for weeks between letters.
 
When walking to school hearing and seeing quantities of prop driven war planes flying over, and wondering if they were getting ready to go to Germany. I lived 3 miles from Waddington RAF station, 6 miles from Swinderby RAF station and about 8 miles from Scampton RAF station. Eventually we had Vulcans to entertain us.

Eventually we moved south to be close to the militiary bases of Portsmouth, HMS Mercury etc. I remember CND gatherings trying to recruit supporters, I declined as I thought that being close to several major targets would mean a quick exit in the event of a nuclear war.
 
Communications. I can remember watching the first Telstar broadcast on TV, now we take if for granted that we can watch sporting events around the globe and stay in communication with people where ever we, and they, are in the world.

The move from analogue to digital, which I guess relates to the above.

The invention of colour in the 1960s was a tremendous improvement on the black and white world that had existed before then.
 
George J said:
It is a rule in my house that my smoking friends should feel free to enjoy a smoke if they so wish. I want no interference in that from the nanny state.

As regards dying from it, then think of life as a sexually transmitted disease that is absolutely fatal, however you go about it.
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Just to pick up on a couple of points:

Firstly, the government has not interfered with your right to smoke in your own home. You are free to do so.

On your other point, yes we all die in the end, and you have a degree of choice in the way you conduct yourself, and the risk you take for yourself. But you also have a moral duty not to impose those risks, or the consequences, on others, would you not agree?

So, to make a point: a man may decide to commit suicide by driving his car into a bridge. No harm to others, surely? He could rightly be condemned for choosing to do it by driving into a car coming the other way though, clearly.

But also, what of the poor souls who have to cope with the aftermath of his choice? The emergency services, the traumatised witnesses, surviving friends or family? The other person who desperately needed the police or ambulance, but who didn't get them in time because they were otherwise engaged dealing with this act?

Smoking has consequences for others. Even if it is just taxpayers funding the costs of the extra NHS treatment required. So, your moral right to go to hell in a handcart of your own making affects my moral right not to have to deal with the fallout. So please get down off that Victorian high horse just a little, George, and try to acknowledge that the government has a duty to all, and sometimes it has a duty to impede your own personal freedoms just slightly, for the greater good.
 
Buses are almost empty.
Everyone has a barbecue.
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Well I agree with 10 out of 12 but the leftovers are open for debate.

Buses in my hood are regularly fullish, and we use them at least twice a week, and with 2 vehicles on the drive, soon to be one. We love a bus journey.

I do not know anyone with a barbeque and have not sniffed one this year, meat scorchers.

Bloss
 
clivem2 said:
We had an Austin A30 with the luxury of an electric starter but it did have a starting handle as a backup. It had trafficators too with a big knob on the centre of the dash to operate them.
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My A30 needed the starting handle. If I had the windscreen wipers and the heater on at the same time the battery went flat very quickly. The damn car lost me so many girlfriends, either because they froze in the car, or got wet push starting it.
I loved the indicator knob, though, and the little arms that came out behind the doors to show I was turning.
Eventually I upgraded to a Morris Minor. There's class.
 
Thorn said:
My A30 needed the starting handle. If I had the windscreen wipers and the heater on at the same time the battery went flat very quickly. The damn car lost me so many girlfriends, either because they froze in the car, or got wet push starting it.
I loved the indicator knob, though, and the little arms that came out behind the doors to show I was turning.
Eventually I upgraded to a Morris Minor. There's class.
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Pretty sure that a heater would have been an optional extra in the days of the A30. You must have been posh!
 
blossomchris said:
Well I agree with 10 out of 12 but the leftovers are open for debate.

Buses in my hood are regularly fullish, and we use them at least twice a week, and with 2 vehicles on the drive, soon to be one. We love a bus journey.

I do not know anyone with a barbeque and have not sniffed one this year, meat scorchers.

Bloss
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As it’s a bit of fun I assumed too much licence I guess. I grew up in Doncaster and went from a suburb to the town Grammar on the bus - always rammed and upstairs fogged with fag smoke, esp in winter with the windows tight shut. In Sheffield I see lines of buses moving through the city with a handful of folk on each - perhaps atypical.

I’m sticking to my guns with the BBQ though. They’ve become very popular but when I was a kid they were only seen on American films.

I’d like also to add digital photography. In the day we’d send our holiday rolls to Gratispool and get back unmitigated shite in the fat envelope so things have moved on there for most of us.

Big changes aren’t always for the better, of course. Being a Donny lad (and air cadet) an annual highlight was the Vulcan scramble on BOB day at RAF Finningley and yes, it isn’t bollox, the ground really did shake with one just off the tarmac, a second rolling and the following two spooling up the engines. It was such a glorious row and heightened sensation that I’d gulp and/or get teary-eyed. Now it’s Robin Hood airport. But I can identify visitors with the flight radar app. That’s quite good.
 
The Far North said:
Pretty sure that a heater would have been an optional extra in the days of the A30. You must have been posh!
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I remember my dad saying that heating was an optional extra on the Anglia, well not really optional if you wanted to drive round North Wales in winter and survive.
 
Sometime ago there was a series on R4 speaking to mothers and daughters (or some such).

I think that they were from Sheffield - daughters waxed lyrical about barbecues, mother - she couldn't get over cooking outside and shitting indoors (I quote). All this in broad accent :)
 
Its an obvious one which I guess everyone is avoiding so I will say it anyway.....the TINTERNET thing-a-me-jig. Apparently, it has changed our lives albeit not always in ways we would like but nevertheless it has changed our lives.
 
Big Fred,

thebigfredc said:
Its an obvious one which I guess everyone is avoiding so I will say it anyway.....the TINTERNET thing-a-me-jig. Apparently, it has changed our lives albeit not always in ways we would like but nevertheless it has changed our lives.
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See post 43: Being able to talk hi-fi and off-topic nonsense with blokes half a word away from the can!

Can't do that without the Interweb, unless you're a really loud talker.

Joe
 
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