50s/60s Britain and Now

[St Enodoc]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Having assumed that it was quietly forgotten with the passing of Reginald Dixon, I was amazed, astounded, and so forth to discover that it didn't wheeze its last until 2018!! That is eighteen years into the twenty first century!!

 

True Public Service Broadcasting that, making a programme every single week for the benefit of just one very old person, which is who I assume the audience had consisted of since about ......... well, since it started in 1950 probably.

 

Who where they? I think we should be told. 

Well I used to enjoy it, as I did most of Radio 2's specialised output except C&W. Nigel Ogden was the last presenter I remember.

[Nearholmer]

So it was you! How about that? I'm terribly sorry that I overestimated your age.

[rockershovel]

5 hours ago, Philou said:

Maybe due to the rubbing of those steel knife blades with a great deal of effort and a cork comes the phrase 'with Vim and Vigour' ............. or something ................

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

I think it’s the other way about, various dictionaries and thesaurus describe it as meaning “exuberance or enthusiasm”

 

 

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, pH said:

Rickets has made an occasional comeback. My sister-in-law was a teacher in the old mining districts of Cornwall. Staff in some schools were amazed/appalled to see the odd case of rickets appearing in the early 2000s.

 

It has been re-imported from countries where it was never eliminated, along with diseases like tuberculosis and diphtheria. 

[pH]

28 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

It has been re-imported from countries where it was never eliminated, along with diseases like tuberculosis and diphtheria. 

Rickets is not an infectious disease. It is caused by a lack of vitamin D, due to low exposure to sunlight and/or insufficient amounts in the diet.

[rockershovel]

25 minutes ago, pH said:

Rickets is not an infectious disease. It is caused by a lack of vitamin D, due to low exposure to sunlight and/or insufficient amounts in the diet.

 

That’s correct. It remains common in Sub Saharan Africa, along with various other conditions and syndromes related to poverty and malnutrition. It has also been noted in the more isolated Central and South-East European parts of the Former Soviet Union. 

 

There are serious problems with the modern Western diet, mostly revolving around excessive fat and sugar, but vitamin deficiency syndromes are extremely rare. 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by rockershovel

[pH]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

 

It has been re-imported from countries where it was never eliminated, along with diseases like tuberculosis and diphtheria. 

 

1 hour ago, pH said:

Rickets is not an infectious disease. It is caused by a lack of vitamin D, due to low exposure to sunlight and/or insufficient amounts in the diet.

 

58 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

That’s correct. It remains common in Sub Saharan Africa, along with various other conditions and syndromes related to poverty and malnutrition. It has also been noted in the more isolated Central and South-East European parts of the Former Soviet Union. 

The point I was trying to make was that while diseases like tuberculosis and diphtheria are infectious diseases and can be transmitted between people, rickets is a disease caused by deficiencies in nutrition and living conditions. As such, it is not transmissible between individuals, and so its continuing existence in other parts of the world is not relevant to its reappearance in the UK.

Edited May 26, 2020 by pH

[rockershovel]

No, the point is quite clear, but misleading. Rickets is a vitamin deficiency syndrome which principally manifests itself during childhood . https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/rickets-and-osteomalacia/ 

 

The later 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were characterised by intensive, large-scale public health campaigns designed to improve the nation’s diet, living conditions and habits, and eliminate such conditions - along with infectious diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and diphtheria. The sentiment “no return to the 1930s” meant, quite literally, that such things could no longer be tolerated. 

 

That has been lost, or abandoned now. We don’t have school milk or sun-ray lamp treatment these days, although the dietary additives mostly remain. 

 

What has also changed greatly over that time, is the general belief and policy that in an island population, such conditions could be permanently eradicated. 

 

 

 

 

[TheQ]

 

With the current generation and in some cases their parents,  don't really know those diseases ever existed or the effects they had.

 

There is a case for rickets having been re-imported. In those areas of the UK with a high immigrant population from sunnier climes,  they are wrapped up warm for our weather,  but not getting the sunlight they got from their country of origin.  So there is a higher incidence of of rickets. 

 

For our indigenous population it's not just diet,  but a combination of kids not being told to get out and play, as parents have unfounded fears of the outside world.  With the kids wanting to sit in their rooms playing on an Xbox or watching TV. 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by TheQ

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

 

With the current generation and in some cases their parents,  don't really know those diseases ever existed or the effects they had.

 

There is a case for rickets having been re-imported. In those areas of the UK with a high immigrant population from sunnier climes,  they are wrapped up warm for our weather,  but not getting the sunlight they got from their country of origin.  So there is a higher incidence of of rickets. 

 

For our indigenous population it's not just diet,  but a combination of kids not being told to get out and play, as parents have unfounded fears of the outside world.  With the kids wanting to sit in their rooms playing on an Xbox or watching TV. 

 

 

This is a curious tale; it can be found, among other places, on the NHS website, phrased in a circituous and inconclusive form https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/rickets-on-the-rise/ , the attendant links appear to date the piece to 2010 or so. It is clearly the source for periodic reports in the daily press, which appear over time. 

 

I’ve never believed a word of such claims, given that rickets is most common in Sub Saharan Africa and unknown in Scandinavia, where it is dark, or very short hours of daylight for several months a year. 

 

British Medical Journal offers this https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31949032/   in various forms (both appear to be based on the same information, a study conducted during 2015-17. https://adc.bmj.com/content/103/Suppl_1/A202.3  and also appears in other learned journals elsewhere. The Lancet offers a carefully worded review of the subject comparing the 1960s to 1999    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60211-7/fulltext 

 

All scientific, as opposed to anecdotal (popular press) material appears to focus around dietary aspects. Actual incidence amongst the indigenous population, appears to be extremely low. The Lancet observed outright, that background detail regarding study populations  is so lacking that little useful analysis can be offered. Some versions of the 2010 piece refer to cases not using the available dietary supplements, which implies that these were prescribed or at least, recommended. 

 

 

My late mother, who after all experienced the times and was a trained nurse, felt that “sunshine cures” in the Post-WW2 era were a variant of the “carrots for fighter pilots” principle - something which could be offered in those straitened times at little or no cost, with popular approval and no harmful effects ( the connection between sunshine and skin cancer had not been drawn, at that time) 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by rockershovel

[rockershovel]

Regarding importation of infectious diseases, PHE reporting 

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tuberculosis-rates-in-england-hit-lowest-recorded-levels  indicates a sharp peak in incidence of tuberculosis between 2011-17, including the information that over 70% of cases were among persons not born in UK.

 

BMJ also discusses the same topic https://thorax.bmj.com/content/73/8/702  with specific reference to detection and elimination in immigrant populations. There is also discussion of a peak in the 1990s, referred to but not discussed in the PHE piece. 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by rockershovel

[tomparryharry]

Utility furniture? Yep, we still have the chest of drawers. The cupboard went West a long time ago, and the dressing table not long after. The drawers are still very fit for purpose, so I can't see these going anytime soon.

 

[caradoc]

Regarding furniture then and now, all I can say is........thank goodness we have Ikea now !

 

[Nearholmer]

8 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

Utility furniture?

pity it isn’t still made - it’s very well made, from decent materials, and fit for purpose compared to modern disposable stuff.

[stewartingram]

4 minutes ago, caradoc said:

Regarding furniture then and now, all I can say is........thank goodness we have Ikea now !

 

Oh dear! 

[rockershovel]

48 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

pity it isn’t still made - it’s very well made, from decent materials, and fit for purpose compared to modern disposable stuff.

 

Utility furniture made a lot of use of recycled materials - I remember that the boxwood floors of drawers were literally that, wood from boxes - complete with stencilled lettering. That said, it did mean that much of the wood was of good quality and well seasoned, this being before the general use of unseasoned wood; and of course, MDF and similar materials were not thought of (Masonite and similar materials were used for a variety of purposes, but lack the strength to be used as carcasses of furniture) 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_furniture

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by rockershovel

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, stewartingram said:

Oh dear! 

 

To be fair some Ikea stuff can be pretty decent and solid. Some's a load of flimsy rubbish, but not all of it. I can't see my Ikea kitchen table falling apart any time soon; the top is held on with the usual really low quality fixings (a few of which popped off because I must've over-tightened them) but it's also located by the wood and that and the weight keeps it in place fine, and it feels like it should last. I've also had the usual chipboard drawers that sag and disintegrate after a couple of years.

[rockershovel]

One thing which does rather stick in the memory, is the thoroughly unpleasant school dinners of the 1960s, whether paid for or free. 

 

Gristly mince in watery gravy, lukewarm mashed potatoes with grey lumps... boiled cabbage... slabs of flinty pastry with a thin scrape of chemical-tasting jam.... watery rice and a plastic jug of the same jam, diluted with warm water... stringy, lukewarm beef, sliced very thin...  how wrong can you go with jam roly-poly but the custard was always lumpy and pallid.... large fish-fingers, still frozen in the middle... 

 

My mother’s house-keeping was something of a family joke, but it beat school food hands down. 

Edited May 26, 2020 by rockershovel

[caradoc]

School dinners put me off sago and tapioca for life ! And while the jam roly-poly was OK, my portion had a wasp (alive) stuck in it one day.....

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

One thing which does rather stick in the memory, is the thoroughly unpleasant school dinners of the 1960s, whether paid for or free. 

 

Gristly mince in watery gravy, lukewarm mashed potatoes with grey lumps... boiled cabbage... slabs of flinty pastry with a thin scrape of chemical-tasting jam.... watery rice and a plastic jug of the same jam, diluted with warm water... stringy, lukewarm beef, sliced very thin...  how wrong can you go with jam roly-poly but the custard was always lumpy and pallid.... large fish-fingers, still frozen in the middle... 

 

My mother’s house-keeping was something of a family joke, but it beat school food hands down. 

Sounds like what I got in the 80s! Some of it was OK but a fair bit rather like that. One unusual one we had was chocolate crunch with peppermint sause - the sauce was a vivid green minty custard and the chocolate crunch could've been used for paving slabs, it wasn't far off needing a pneumatic drill to break it, and bits tending to go flying around the dining room.

[Nearholmer]

3 hours ago, Reorte said:

To be fair some Ikea stuff can be pretty decent and solid.

Agree. My study shelving system is from a really good range that, much to my annoyance, Ikea deleted from their range.

 

School dinners: my youngest bro had them sorted on Day 1. So unimpressed was he at age 5 that on the his first day at school he stomped out of the dinner hall, and carried on stomping until he got home. Thereafter, was the only child in a school of about 160 children who was allowed to bring sandwiches!

 

Those dinners really were below par ...... good ingredients, and potentially OK recipes utterly murdered by poor cooking, all the way through school. By secondary school the compulsion to eat them had backed-off and I used to survive I one mars bar from the tuck shop, using the rest of the money to save up for railway modelling bits and OS maps (cycling and walking).

[Kickstart]

Of the schools I went to the meals varied from very good to pretty poor

 

All the best

 

Katy

[The Johnster]

Of the schools I went to ‘pretty poor’ for food was pretty aspirational...

[rockershovel]

Chicken was a delicacy, before the introduction of battery farming in the 1960s. 

[TheQ]

I don't think I ever saw chicken at any school. At my primary school, dinners had the added advantage of being brought from a remote cook house in hot not very warm boxes.. Eaten in a scout hall with pealing paint,  and served on trestle tables.