The 80's Recession V's this one?

mogrady14

I think this recession is worse. We are aware of what a banana republic this country is.
Before, people would believe organisations like the Department of Finance, ESRI, Department of Health and think that they gave a damn about Ireland and its people. Nowdays, we all know about how Irish taxpayers will end up subsidising billionaire EU and American bondholders. We know private hospitals were built with public money and got huge tax breaks while sick people were left to rot. Check out the level of neptoism in local authorities and civil service and contracts awarded at inflated prices. There are 8 million PPS numbers in a country where only 4.5million people were included in the census.

Technology and sexual morality has changed. Sex before marriage is fine. Surf the net and watch netflix for small money.

People rarely emigrate to the UK today but they did in the 80's. Lots of non-Irish work in the private sector while the public sector (especially the civil service) is over 95% Irish. Much of the work that was done in the 80's by public sector is privatised e.g. bin collection. Quangos have been set up but only seem to hire certain people (jobs for the boys).In the 80's Irish people entered the US illegally to work. Nowdays, people from all over the world enter this country on "student visas" and end up cleaning toilets in government buildings on an outsourced cleaning contract. We have huge government departments dealing with asylum.

Unemployment in the 80's peaked at 250k with few single parents. Nowdays, unemployment is at 440k not including the tens of thousands of unemployed single parents.In the 80's if you lost your job there were more avenues open to you. You could emigrate to the UK or the US- not a great idea today. If you are over 30 its harder to emigrate to Australia.
In the 80's if you lost your job you could retrain for a different skill. Nowdays, in the private sector there a people coming from abroad with those skills. Retraining is a waste.
In the 80's if you lost your job you set up your own business. This is difficult today as
many small Irish businesses are closing. Huge foreign stores are opening up. Difficult to compete with Tescos.

keithclancy

DaDumTish wrote: »

the difference is this :

in the 80's the government were not systematically trying to remove every spare penny you had

this one ( in cohorts with the EU ) - it determined that you will never save again / or have free spare cash .


you will exist barely - and thats it .

it heading to where one day the gov will pay you what is left
after tax, mortgage , etcetc , and it wont be much , hell they may even supply you with clothing and food and you ll have nothing over.

think im wrong ?
think again .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland#1980s

The 1980s in the Republic of Ireland was one of the state's bleakest times. An extremely irresponsible budget by the majority Fianna Fáil government in 1977, which included abolition of car tax and borrowing to fund current spending, combined with some global economic problems to ruin the Irish economy for most of the 1980s, causing high unemployment and mass emigration. The Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald governments made this bad situation much worse with more massive borrowing and tax rates as high as 60% (with one Fine Gael finance minister suggesting people were not being taxed enough

mikemac1

AnCO and FÁS

Both equally as useless as the other

iguana

The question in the OP can not be answered right now as this recessionary period is barely in it's infancy. Ask again in a couple of decades but if I had to guess I suspect this one will be an awful lot worse in retrospect.

starlit

This recession is worse than the 80's because this recession affects not only Ireland in a massive way and a way more than the last time but affects the whole world too! Then again we have the Euro this time and had our own individual currency the last time. With the Euro likely to go bankrupt Europe isn't as economically stable from money point of view like anything could happen.
While the countries that haven't the Euro in the EU aren't as badly affected as they have stuck with their own currency and too right they should they made the right choice.

To be honest it was bad in the 80's but wasn't as bad compared to now though from money point of view we are probably better off than we were in the 80's but that's because we never knew that we have it so good coming into the boom. Though the boom its self I think it was just pumping bogus money about people earning more money than necessary, having money they didn't really have and when the recession hit they were left with little money to pay the big expenses as the money ran out and bust itself in the property crash, construction industry and developer industry as well as the banks industry all plays a domino affect as spending grew less, less jobs available. Not enough jobs to meet demand which is badly affecting Ireland at the moment leading to massive increases of unemployment and emigration. The country isn't as alive as it once was when the tiger roared, its well and truly dead now and the tiger will never come back I don't think.

There is more demand than there is jobs like so that in itself make an impact how a country will recover. Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece and a few other smaller countries are probably the worse off in the EU at the moment due to bail outs, borrowing money and not having enough money and jobs to grow the economy again to a reasonable amount like it did in the early 90's if we could get back to that stability before the boom I then I think we be doing very well!

bijapos

And nowadays you don't have Yellow Pack goods, the true stamp of how poor you were. Big bright boxes peeking through thin Quinnsworth bags, a true sign you were living through the recession.

Run_to_da_hills

bijapos wrote: »

And nowadays you don't have Yellow Pack goods, the true stamp of how poor you were. Big bright boxes peeking through thin Quinnsworth bags, a true sign you were living through the recession.

You now have Tesco Value products which are worse.

phill106

bijapos wrote: »

And nowadays you don't have Yellow Pack goods, the true stamp of how poor you were. Big bright boxes peeking through thin Quinnsworth bags, a true sign you were living through the recession.

All hail Maurice Pratt!

TanG411

We need to knock all the buildings to get the building trade up and running again.

mathie

im invisible wrote: »

it was acceptable in the 80's, it was acceptable at the time

Stiffler2 wrote: »

It was acceptable in the 80's

I see why you're called Stifler2.

Spacedog

Yellow pack cornflakes tasted horrible (like special K mixed with pencil shavings). At least tesco/aldi stuff looks/tastes like/is what it's supposed to be, I'm betting in a blindfold taste test most would have a hard time telling the difference.

lots more opportunities today than in the 80s, make/sell stuff on e-bay, train yourself in new skills on the internet etc.

lucylu

After being in Kildare Village yesterday I would say what recession. Kildare Village was mobbed and the overflow carpark was full.

af_thefragile

Reading the last few pages of this thread reminded me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

gcgirl

bijapos wrote: »

And nowadays you don't have Yellow Pack goods, the true stamp of how poor you were. Big bright boxes peeking through thin Quinnsworth bags, a true sign you were living through the recession.

Do you remember in August the yellow pack copy's just in time to get stocked up for September

cartell_best

I was a child during the recession of the 80's but I never knew what cereal was (as in corn flakes, weetabixs, etc..). There's 14 in my family and my mam and dad worked hard. Most of my brothers joined the army and my sisters were training with Anco (at the time). The recession we're in at the moment is a lot worse because a lot of people I know are not working now.

This recession (from my perspective) started in 2006 and I personally felt the effects in 2008 when a company I was working for went bust. Luckily I managed to get a new job and I have to say, I'm no worse off. But this recession shows no signing of easing off. I know some people who were buying new cars just to keep up with the neighbours before this God damn recession took complete hold. Now, they have a job just making ends meet. Maybe I wasn't old enough to comprehend what was going on in the 80's. But jesus, the recession we are experiencing now really does put things into perspective.

gcgirl

Spacedog wrote: »

Yellow pack cornflakes tasted horrible (like special K mixed with pencil shavings). At least tesco/aldi stuff looks/tastes like/is what it's supposed to be, I'm betting in a blindfold taste test most would have a hard time telling the difference.

lots more opportunities today than in the 80s, make/sell stuff on e-bay, train yourself in new skills on the internet etc.

Use to get my aunt to buy the yellow pack stuff then put it in the cornflakes box, I even back then as a kid did not see the sense in buying something just because of a label

DoesNotCompute

mogrady14 wrote: »

In the 80's if you lost your job you set up your own business. This is difficult today as
many small Irish businesses are closing. Huge foreign stores are opening up. Difficult to compete with Tescos.

Maybe the "small Irish businesses" shouldn't be charging rip-off "convenience" store prices? Then people wouldn't be driven to Tesco and other "foreign" stores in their droves?

fedor.2.

Biggins wrote: »

The 80's depression (even a few years up to it) was far worse in a number of ways (to me anyway).
There was not as much avenues that could be seen, as to how to stimulate the economy back again.
We were still fairly new to the mechanisms of the EU and how things were done, on that alone sometimes we were feeling in the dark, having hit and miss opportunities and disasters till we slowly learned better.

There was also not (and this cannot be understated) so many charities and/or organisations that were willing, never mind able, to help out - even government help to those that were really down and broke - and I mean broke (I remember one day my mother, god bless her, having to bring food to a friend of hers who was heartbroken and depressed at not being able to provide for her children. The 4 kids the next morning really didn't have anything in the home to eat - not even a form of breakfast cereal.), so broke we shared shoes with other families and some clothing.
- I remember the provincial town hall center in my town having to hand out EU unbranded tinned food in plastic bags. All those that had nothing, took these tins and hoped for the best it was eatable. Oft times it wasn't. It was worse than dog food, looked and smelled like it.

My father bordered on the line of becoming an alcoholic at the time, such was the real stress and strain of trying daily to find work just to feed and clothe us.
The schools somehow managed to find money to feed some of the 'special' kids that had nothing - again, oft times not even books or pencils, things was that bad.
(School books was shared a lot more. It was normal to see class rooms with two desks shoved together, sharing books)
One of the first things a teacher would ask daily on entering a class would be "Ok, who's got a book? Do you mind sharing?"

There was no such thing as school trips/holidays away. I couldn't understand at the time why some kids got to go away for school trips and others had to stay at home on a regular basis. Be it one day trips or week trips abroad.
The money was just not there.

My father (electrician) we eventually said goodbye to, what seems like years.
He ended up down in the construction of the Channel tunnel, he ended up in Bermuda for a year on a construction site. He rarely came home during the times but always sent home what money he could.

Everyone we knew in our family was down and broke - and I mean everyone.
It was a terrible, terrible grey depressing time and it breaks my heart to see vestiges of it returning yet again so that in fear, my own kids might suffer from touches of a depression once again.

I am a man. I'm as stubborn and thick as any man can be at the grumpiest of times but will still admit to occasionally having tears in my eye when I look back at the previous times when things were really, really bad, when I look back at how my mother and father suffered - yet amazingly sacrificed food and clothes for themselves so my parents younger offspring could eat.

It was a truly awful time and for many, there seemed no way out. Our local river took many lives and with news of each death, everyone got more depressed.

Long story short, we (Ireland) didn't have the more means, resources, avenues, contacts, experience and much more, to be able to better our economy for some time.

I could go on but I've said enough for now.
The memories are still too painful.

Thanks for reminding me to appreciate what i have. I too remember those days.

WoollyRedHat

You whippersnappers don't know how good ya have it, talk of the 80s recession, pffft, you want hardship, travel back to the 50s.... no hope, all the womens were emigrating like birds and twas an awful sausage fest in the country as a result. Feck all industry and dancing was seen as something criminal, at least it was acceptable in the 80s... schools, pah, we were taught behind a welll.

But we had our freedom, aye we had that for sure. Freedom, you don't value freedom for what it is, freedom is a blessing young ones, freedom is a blessing

kincsem

The recession around 1974 was a biggie. No SUVs, laptops, internet, credit cards, and stuff. You just had to stand at a busstop in the pissing rain.

Mickey H

mikemac1 wrote: »

Were there any draught beers back then that are gone now?

Or is it still the usual suspects?

Just interested to know

Kaliber and Ritz? Haven't seen them in a long time.

mikemac1 wrote: »

Some many posts about wallpaper
Crazy the small things we remember

Anyone remember Kandee ketchup.

I sure do. Have a big bottle of in down in the fridge. Lovely stuff!

Alessandra

Brown paper was a luxury to cover books with., I remember the kids who had cornflakes boxes covering their books!

mikemac1

Mickey H wrote: »

Kaliber and Ritz? Haven't seen them in a long time.

Ritz is still around though not for draught.
Sold in cans in offies

Not seen Kaliber in a long time

keithclancy

Anyone else remember Babycham ?

Classy

Bajingo

smash wrote: »

I can't imagine anyone these days on the dole being able to afford it out of a week's pay.

You could definitely pay for the flights and have a bit left over.

Agricola

Looking back at the 80's recession on tv clips etc, everything seemed so damn depressing. Bad clothes, ugly cars, everything was a shade of brown, the most advanced piece of technology in anyone's house was their microwave.
Now you can sit in your minimalist flat, sipping a frappucino, while you skype your friend in Canada and tell him that your thinking of spending your dole on a cheap flight to Barcelona, just to get some sun and to cheer yourself up a bit.



* The above doesnt apply to me. Im a maxwell house man.

mikemac1

Great post Biggins there in post eleven, was tough and sad to read, was a lot more grim then I remember it through my childhood eyes

But then I think was a bit younger and youngsters don't have many worries or might not be aware of the problems and difficulties at home

Biggins wrote: »

(School books was shared a lot more. It was normal to see class rooms with two desks shoved together, sharing books)
One of the first things a teacher would ask daily on entering a class would be "Ok, who's got a book? Do you mind sharing?"

I remember this alright and there was no shame at all, if you didn't have the book well you weren't on your own. Was just considered normal and teachers knew what was going on, nobody would ever be shamed over it and singled out

But decades later, schools still constantly update books lists and the big winners are the publishers.
A lot of pressure on parents every year and hundreds of euro can be spent on schoolbooks, there has to be a better way

There is no need for publishers to update their books so regularly and there is no need for schools to always put the latest edition on their book list

Biggins

It was a time of Yosser Hughes - who remembers that? "Gizza job!" (a very sad, depressing, excelent and all too accurate tv program) and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet where the men left for where the work was abroad.

In the 70's/80's there was no charity shops, no easier access to cheap clothes and shoes (its been said already but) there was no internet, no way of mass communication for the public except for the newspapers (and if you were looking for work, it was a gamble to buy one every day for every week or try save the money to send on basics sometimes. Before the libraries started doing it, newspapers was shared between houses in a street.
(The Tv consisted of 3 to 5 stations depending on where you were based in Ireland)

There was no mobiles or regular round-dial house phones under every roof (it was a far too common sight to see the old phone boxes on street corners with their big "A" and "B" buttons, busted open and the lower half, the coin collection box gone - which was no easy task at all to do I'm still told!).
Once my dad was in Germany working on a site and later at night, he would try ring home to Ireland. We had no phone at the time in the house, simply couldn't afford it (a phone in the house? That was seriously only for the far better off) so he had to ring a neighbour further up the street and asked if he could speak to his wife and kids for a few minutes.
We were sent for and at 8 o'clock at night, in the cold, we had to get our duffel coats on, all of us and go up the street to someone's house to hear in a cold hallway, our dads voice on their phone from all those miles away.
It would occasionally be the first time my ma had heard his voice in months and I could tell it was very hard on her even then when she had to hang up the phone and say good bye to our dad.
Hearing his voice myself and that he was ok, was like a small Christmas had come. This was my dad I was talking to from all those miles away, "why couldn't he come home sooner ma?"...
My da was never a letter writer really - but bless, he tried and I love him to this day for it as does my ma.

You REALLY had to save for a flight away. It was serious money and for some, it was a gamble. You could go to places and it might not work out, you didn't find work - so then you had somehow to find the very expensive fare back by really starving yourself and doing the lowest of work in a country that you did not speak the language. You didn't have the money to go buying fancy phrase books to translate. It was hit and miss in trying to understand.
There was no standard, what we use today, international communication. Letters was the speed of most communication, Be it just writing to a foreign country asking about work, weeks to get there and maybe even more weeks even back again with a possible good (oft times bad) reply, a reply got at all if you were lucky!

We had the wallpaper and brown paper covered books - when we had books and they were hand-me-downs - and god forbid your wrote on your books!
There was no Aldi's or Lidl's for cheap food. There was no expensive electronic toys (a good day was the day dad was home and you could kick a ball with him, a rare treat), there was no endless supply of own music except what you taped on well used re- and re-recorded over cassette, off the radio as they played it - if you were lucky enough to have a tape recorder with a microphone! Comics were even a special luxury. A Beano or Dandy was something that was looked after and then shared.

Food for some family's, was something that was fought over, quite rough at times.
One family "The Quinns" had a dad that was absolute useless horse gambler (when he was home) that often would spend every penny in trying just to break even in trying to pay back debts owed.
He became that, was due to his efforts just to try and make money to pay bills in the first place. It was a fools tactic. He ended up losing everything including his wife and kids - and he was not the first nor last that my parents knew about personally. Prior to his final exit, we called on the mother and kids one day only to find the young kids fighting over the kitchen table screaming at each other that one had robbed the others food, and they were serious, not play-acting or playing up to their ma (who was very stressed, eyes sunk into the back of her head and thin herself). The kids were all thin and retched looking, all run down with ill health (there was no cheaper drug medical system where you only had to pay a maximum a month in drug costs and the government covered the rest), and one had constant asthma needs.

My mother to this day, has a little note book that she showed me a few times wherein she used to write down her expected intake of weekly money, where she would write down what had to be paid first (ESB, gas, mortgage, etc), next came food and their costs for basics (if there was any left even then), and on and on till the money eventually ran out.
The 'never-never' became a popular word on our street as I suspect it did on many and all feared the weekly call of the payment collector on your doorstep with his little book too!
It became no shame as to all have to stay quiet in the house when they called to the door. It became a game for us as kids.

Christmas toys were basic and few. Ma and da would start in January in our case (as we kids learned much later in years) paying a few pence every week towards savings scheme for the next December month. Depending on how much was saved per week and it all eventually added up to an amount that varied each year, that amount was divided between the number of kids and what ever share was possible, that was the amount that had to cover as much toys as possible per person. It was never much but to be honest, our da was home for Christmas sometimes and that meant as much to us, if not more, with one toy than no da and with three toys in our possession. Even Lego then was a luxury.

For all that my mother and father went through, they really were harsh times and I will as my brother and sisters still do, love them eternally for what they did and sacrificed for us.
They really were the best of the best as parents, with what little they had.
We might not have been rich in money but in love and care, as kids we were blessed in abundance.
That part I would never change and I still hold some of those small good memories, amid the bad ones, precious to me.

hairyprincess

My father died tragically in the early 80's, so my mother was a single parent during the recession. As I am now. So based on my experience as a child of a single parent family and now as a parent of a single parent family I can honestly say the 80's was worse; certainly from a financial aspect for my family.
But I'm sure everyone will have differing experiences

iguana

Biggins wrote: »

(The Tv consisted of 3 to 5 stations depending on where you were based in Ireland)

The tv consisted of 1 station in most of the country. Then one and a half stations as RTE 2 only started at 6.30pm each day.