What do you value? Whether past or present is better/worse depends largely on what aspects of life you value most.

As with most things there is always a trade off.

I was a kid/teenager in the 50's & early 60's and, even though we lacked the comforts and technical innovations of today, on balance I wouldn't change my youth then for one today.

Hmm. If you wanted to phone someone up you had to hope they were at home or else had splashed out on an answerphone which they actually bothered to use.

No Internet meant among other things that working requied you actually to go to the office instead of sitting at a laptop on your dining-table in your dressing gown.

You couldn't watch the match unless you were at the ground because there were hardly any TV channels. Now you can't watch the match unless you are at the ground because there are hundreds of TV channels but they all broadcast s***e and the people that own the TV rights to the matches are greedy incompetent t***s.

If you wanted new software on your computer you took a train to East Croydon, then a bus to Fiveways, hoped PC World had it in stock, then carted the box back and stuck 25 diskettes in your drive one after another until it told you there wasn't enough space. Now, if you want new software on your computer, you download it in two minutes flat, run the installer, then it tells you you haven't got this library or that license file and you spend the rest of the afternoon hunting for it in out-of-date websites.

Windows was s*** because it had bad memory management and slow code. Now, Windows is s*** because it has bad user interface design and lots of unwanted features. However, nowadays Linux is usable by people without PhDs in computing science.

When the Internet was new everyone on it was intelligent because you had to be to make anything work. Now it's full of numpties filling the place with s*** content and f***ing all the infrastructure up with s*** tools and Microsoft s*** that eats bandwidth like my cat eats Sainsbury's chicken roll.

Teachers took no s*** from anyone and if you mucked around in school your arse was toast. If you complained to your parents it was tough s***. Now it's the weans who take no s*** and if they complain to their parents about the teacher the parents go stoating into the school and get stuck into the teachers.

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The Ferret
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The old Sunday opening hours - what were we thinking of???????

My then local, the cricketers on Shirley road, used to have 3 bars, public, saloon & lounge.
the lounge bar was strictly smart wear , couples would go out for the evening well dressed & yes served 'chicken & chips' in the basket!
old guys had their own tankards.
A mile up the road is the sandrock which at the time resembled a smart hotel bar, the staff all wore white dress shirts & black bow ties.

Kids,tired of being bothered by your pesky parents?
Then leave home, get a job & pay your own bills, while you still know everything.

Ah the good old days.

Couldn't eat beef due to mad cow disease, now it's either horse meat or GMO frankenstein food.

Pubs, if you got the s*** kicked out of you, he'd at least shake your hand after - now, they just film it on snap chat.

Bars - they stunk of smoke, now it's fart or brut.

TV shows, back in the day it was wooden backgrounds, now its CGI drawings.

but yeah, i digress.. things do change, some for the better, some for the worst. Social media is wrecking society - creating so much divide - the world appears so much more racist now, homophobic and negative when in reality the opposite is true.. but it's all agendas right,

This was once a quality forum....

it'a post thatcher, before her british bobbies were the best in the world tuna fish was called pilchards and whatever needed fixing was sorted out by Jimmy Saville