Rod licences...

[terry m]

I am not anti POs per se, however our village offering is run but an individual with a face like a dropped pie and a ‘computer says no’ approach.
I remember the Wimpy in Salisbury as a kid growing up. It was a little like fast food but with crockery and cutlery. Apart from fish and chips I don’t remember any other fast food back then.

 

[John Aston]

I will give a respectful nod to village post offices, which are generally a Good Thing .To the relief of many, our town post office was closed a few years ago and remains unmourned . But Wimpy Bars - come on , they were ghastly , ersatz Americana serving leathery burgers, emetic sweets and awful coffee . My memories are of overflowing ashtrays , indifferent staff and a lingering sense of guilt at eating such muck

 

[seth49]

The trouble here is that the three main banks have closed in the last year or so, all down to online banking, now if we need to go to our branch, the nearest is about ten miles away.

 

[nottskev]

I mentioned bank branches, public transport and post offices in he same post as I'm hopeful the third will not go the way of the first two. I don't in general favour further unpicking the stitching of our social fabric. I don't think life will improve as we move closer to Every Man For Himself through digitalisation, automation, privatisations, into daily life conducted through App's and Chatbots. I have a Danish friend, so their English can be unintentionally amusing. They wrote a couple of days ago that their government "tries to run the country for the comfort and convenience of the public". Imagine that!

I only liked Wimpy Bars when I was 8 or 9. I didn't notice the over-flowing ashtrays. Possibly because they were everywhere you went in 1965. The Wimpy Bar in Chester was all shiny formica tables, glossy decor and big bright windows. Many of the native cafe chains and cafeterias (Littlewoods, British Home Stores) had a sad school canteen feel.

 

[John Aston]

Even in rural North Yorkshire, let alone the fleshpots of York, eating out now is lightyears better than in the grey years of my childhood . Turkish style breakfasts , locally roasted coffee and decent wine in every pub . There is little I mourn from the past - and the irony is that when I grew up there was a pervasive air of optimism about the sort of future that in many ways we are now living in and yet now so many of my fellow Brits seem to mourn a past which is largely a fiction .

 

[nottskev]

I'm more interested in gauging what we've gained and what we've lost/are losing than in being nostalgic. It's not hard to assemble evidence that we're becoming a poor country with some rich people. Material gains, and Turkish style breakfasts, for some at the expense of a broader loss of community and wider decline in living standards is hardly a radical diagnosis. Regarding futures: do people remember Tomorrow's World, and its flash-forward to the better world ahead, enabled by progress? It's hard to imagine such a programme now. Where did the bright future go? I don't recall Raymond Baxter mentioning food banks, health care rationing and people pulling out their own teeth,

 

[Alan Whitty]

Rich people can fly away and not worry about this country,the not so well off are always the ones who suffer most,as has always been the case....

 

[John Aston]

I mentioned breakfasts as a trivial example of progress. I too care about the NHS crisis, the fact that some people are reliant on foodbanks and the fact that we have had a period of governmental chaos since Brexit. But we are anything but a poor country and living standards are immeasurably higher than in the past some mourn . As a kid , I lived in the big house which the village doctor had, but all my friends lived in Council houses. Many had outside toilets. some lacked even a bath , hardly anybody had a car and the pollution and dirt was unimaginable by modern standards . TV was awful , what little there was of it, food was even worse and racism and homophobia was the norm . Industrial and road traffic accidents claimed a huge toll of death and injury and all the rivers where I lived were dead . Abortion was illegal - meaning dad had to treat patients suffering from the ghastliness of back street abortion . Because , of course, having kids outside marriage was to invite condemnation from all .

None of this made it a bad period to be alive - because things were still better than they had been before. The bombsites in nearby Leeds were a reminder of that, and we had a far more sophisticated welfare state than ever before.

There was an undeniable sense of community which has certainly been lost for some - but not all , by any means . And there are new communities, not defined by geography, but by common interest. I love the fact that my other main interest (motor sport ) means that I have friends in the USA and Australasia , because I write for an American website with a big audience. More parochially, communities are created by web forums like this one , FB groups and so on. It is different from the face to face monthly meeting of the specimen groups I belonged to , but it has many advantages over the old model of community and communication .

Not all is great but we are far from doomed

 

[nottskev]

Thinking there was some Golden Age when all was well is no use to anyone, and actually harmful, so I hope I'm not doing that. The notion, to exemplify Golder Age thinking, that WE were all ok here til THEY came and spoiled it, and if everybody got back in their box we'd be fine again is a fiction that erases history. I certainly don't think the period of (necessary)post-war austerity is anything to be nostalgic about, although it can be used to prop up versions of "real binmen" nostalgia.

I take all your points, or nearly all, and I'm happy to acknowledge I have far more stuff packed into my house (considerably less than many, I can say) than my parents. But in other respects the world in which they had and brought up a family is imo to be recalled and contrasted with the present. Opportunity and social mobility during a window in the 60's and 70's were far greater on any measure. An Irish immigrant with talent and drive, my dad, could earn enough in a succession of skilled jobs to house and support a growing family on one wage. His children could expect to live longer, could aspire to professional jobs via free Higher Education, keep their teeth and general health longer, set themselves up in homes early in their lives, and enjoy the benefits of improving standards of living. At the same time, they could enjoy the public amenities bequeathed by our more prosperous and public-spirited past, travel the country easily and cheaply by private of public means and feel secure that if things went wrong the state and the health service had their backs. How much of that, for all the superficial increase in material wealth wealth enjoyed in some quarters, still obtains?

Choosing one personal angle. In 2007, I needed and got, without delay, a series of heart procedures, angiograms, angioplasties etc. On one occasion, I came home knowing things hadn't worked. I called the NHS surgeon's secretary. He called me a couple of hours later, questioned me, and said, come in tomorrow. I did and he repeated the procedure, this time with success. These days, I need to campaign to see a GP and declined to call an ambulance when I really should have as I couldn't face the ordeal that would ensue.

I don't think we're doomed, but I fear we're heading in some kind of sub-American direction. Private wealth, public squalor, huge inequalities, insecure and angry people, gated communities, despoiled landscapes, political demagogues. We can do better than this.

 

[flightliner]

In my shopfitting days I used to work for a company who's main customer was "Wimpey International".
There standard outlet design was pretty high end, particularly the suspended ceilings with their multiplicity of illuminated picture menus (remember them?) and sidewall seating arrangements.
One pre opening practice they had was training the new cooking staff who needed to know all the menus and odd variation of them and we were the Guinea pigs
They would ask what we wanted and prep it, at first it was nice/novel and free but after a couple of weeks I became tired of the same old same old to the extent that a resumed taking sandwhiches and a flask.
That said some years ago I was invited to a night out ten pin bowling in Mansfield where there was a Wimpey in the same building, After the game I allowed myself a burger and tbh I enjoyed it despite all the freebies of decades ago.
On balance I think they outshine the Macky Ds and Burgerkings by a country mile but only when eaten in moderation.

 

[mikench]

I agree Kev. It appears that trying to get a face to face with a GP is like finding Lord Lucan. Alans’experience of calling his surgery at 8.00am and not getting through is commonplace. Years ago I caught acute hepatitis A , probably from shell fish. I remember ringing the surgery early in the morning knowing I was ill, looked like an Umpalumpa and had dayglo orange pee. I was told to come down immediately so I walked round. The senior partner at the time, a superb GP but one with no patience for shirkers, walked into the waiting room announced my name and helped me through to his room. He expressed amazement that I had managed to walk round, annoyance that reception had allowed me to do so and stated in emphatic tones that I was not walking back home. He diagnosed my ailment and gave me a lift back home. He then visited me at least every 2 days once his diagnosis was confirmed by blood tests. Imagine your GP or any GP doing that now. They want an email or a Wattsapp with a photo and then someone might call you with an opinion. That is not progress.
To bring the thread back on track, I like the barbel depicted on the licence.

 

[nottskev]

To bring the thread back on track,

What was it about? I forget.

 

[John Aston]

Such a hold does the largely un-mourned burger chain exert over the public memory that its spelling is confused with a construction firm ...

 

[flightliner]

Such a hold does the largely un-mourned burger chain exert over the public memory that its spelling is confused with a construction firm ...

Lol, there was a joke concerning each letter of that companies name at one time of day.

 

[nottskev]

Lol, there was a joke concerning each letter of that companies name at one time of day.

Lol, there was a joke concerning each letter of that companies name at one time of day.

Nothing rude, I hope, Mick?

 

[flightliner]

Nothing rude, I hope, Mick?

No kev, nothing rude, simply funny back in the day but times have moved on.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Reminds me from way back the company I worked for bought a small fabrication company in Gt Yarmouth called EUMECH

After a few meetings on their site we decided the name stood for, Every Useless Motherfu**er Eventually Comes Here.