As the global right claims the UK has 'gone to the dogs' over recent decades, our intergenerational panel looks at what life in the country really used to be like. Today, Otto English and Issie Yewman
See also multiple recessions, 3 day week, inflation over 20% and interest rates to match. I bought my first terraced house in S London with an interest rate of 12-15%. My children bought their first flats at rates of 2-3%. My repayments as a proportion of income were much higher. Lived on credit cards! It all led to Thatcher
Then there’s the racism, homophobia … and the odd threat of nuclear war. No, the 70s were not a good time - though there was some great music
I was in my 24th year in 1970. This piece is hardly a representative sample or objective evidence. Not what I’d call the fearless journalism from Byline that you don’t get elsewhere. Must do better.
We could make a list of all the things that are far worse today and could be terminal. If the 70’s were so bad it seems nobody has learned anything from the mistakes that were made. One of the biggest and most damaging errors was the adoption and promotion of neoliberalism (started under Callaghan and enthusiastically adopted by Thatcher) and the malign idea of the household economy as the model for the state economy even where a country has its own fiat currency. This was put about by Thatcher as an excuse for cutting government spending on public services etc. and the pernicious myth is still embraced by almost every politician, and journalist, including those who write on Byline, despite the paradigm being demonstrably wrong.
a bit older than Otto, I was sometimes sent to stand in the corner (was actually quite naughty) but remember to this day a quiet, studious girl named Susan who received multiple slaps to the back of her legs for the heinous crime of having marked her copy book in some way, aged 5. Her little legs buckled and she cried.
Also remember scheduled power cuts (they were brilliant, we got the candles ready, like a repeated Hallow'een only the grown-ups also got to play). Thank god we didn't have iphones to charge.
See also multiple recessions, 3 day week, inflation over 20% and interest rates to match. I bought my first terraced house in S London with an interest rate of 12-15%. My children bought their first flats at rates of 2-3%. My repayments as a proportion of income were much higher. Lived on credit cards! It all led to Thatcher
Then there’s the racism, homophobia … and the odd threat of nuclear war. No, the 70s were not a good time - though there was some great music
I was in my 24th year in 1970. This piece is hardly a representative sample or objective evidence. Not what I’d call the fearless journalism from Byline that you don’t get elsewhere. Must do better.
We could make a list of all the things that are far worse today and could be terminal. If the 70’s were so bad it seems nobody has learned anything from the mistakes that were made. One of the biggest and most damaging errors was the adoption and promotion of neoliberalism (started under Callaghan and enthusiastically adopted by Thatcher) and the malign idea of the household economy as the model for the state economy even where a country has its own fiat currency. This was put about by Thatcher as an excuse for cutting government spending on public services etc. and the pernicious myth is still embraced by almost every politician, and journalist, including those who write on Byline, despite the paradigm being demonstrably wrong.
a bit older than Otto, I was sometimes sent to stand in the corner (was actually quite naughty) but remember to this day a quiet, studious girl named Susan who received multiple slaps to the back of her legs for the heinous crime of having marked her copy book in some way, aged 5. Her little legs buckled and she cried.
Also remember scheduled power cuts (they were brilliant, we got the candles ready, like a repeated Hallow'een only the grown-ups also got to play). Thank god we didn't have iphones to charge.
No, I fucking wouldn't go back to the 70's