The 70's and 80's in Ireland

Big Nasty

Murphy's Micro Quizm

I lived in flats in town and the sense of community was amazing in the late 70s anyway cos then we moved to the country...green green fields of fionn glass.. finglas..

the 80's were brilliant, quite a bit of the oul wife beating going on I will say.
winter nights started lighting bangers then went on to making slides with bottles of water, trying to break dance on a big lump of cardboard. All the kids on the road agreed on the cool christmas gift de jour!! roller skates, bikes, astro wars, donkey kong, He-man figures and annuals..member annuals?? beezer, dandy, 2000ad?? girls world for the ladeeeez!!! thursday top of the pops was a huge deal!!!

you were marched into the paddys parade with a wad of dying moss on yer jacket that would choke a donkey, but if we were good, me oud lad bought us all a super spit!!, it was inch thick orange over a pound of ice cream back then!! or maybe that's cos I was small!!

easter was cool, one egg each cos me oul lad was on the dole..twas gone before mass FFS! but it marked the dry warmer weather so off came the school shoes and down to quinnsworth or pennys for sizzlers or wings! (great for walking in the river later in the summer once relegated to river wear)

summers were hot, days were in skerries, rainbow rapids, bray, clara lara. evenings on a road with the child count per house hitting 5!! yes 5 kids!!
were spent playing rounders, tennis, hide and seek and of course catch and feel!! wayda gonna do eh!!

downside, lotta domestic violence that I remember, not a horrendous amount but I do recall it, that said...twas much better than now! but hey, I was a kid and therefore not responsible for 5 other kids, I'm sure me oul lad has his take on it! involuntary euthanasia maybe :-)

Grayson

Masala wrote: »

and you forgot Renault... Renault 5 for the poor... Renault 18 for the rich. I cant remember the other numbers in between. God-damn UGLY cars.

We had a Renault 4 and then got a fiat ritmo. The ritmo was a piece of crap.

oceanman

people think we are better off now...and maybe in some ways we are. but just look at the very high suicide rates we have now, mostly among young people, that we didn't have back in the day.

lazygal

oceanman wrote: »

people think we are better off now...and maybe in some ways we are. but just look at the very high suicide rates we have now, mostly among young people, that we didn't have back in the day.

Suicides were hushed up as something else for many years. At least now people say a person died by suicide instead of feeling like they have to hide what happened.

jmayo

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

You forgot the sh!te Fiats that were all over the place. The retired next door neighbour bought a new 127 at the end of the 70s, he only drove it locally, gearbox went after a couple of years and after another couple it was riddled with rust. People bought them because they were cheaper but they were cheaper for a reason.

Ehh stop reminding me.
A fooking 128 that would never ever start.

Matt Barrett wrote: »

We'd an economy built on construction, which led to a recession when that collapsed. And fair play, the 1980's was the last time we made that mistake.

Condoms were illegal, because...church ...something something....
AIDS was all the rage for some reason and everyone wanted a Kerry baby.

You were often reminded not to forget your shovel if you wanted to go to work because Sally O'Brien would look at you funny.

There was a nation wide movement to free a Nipper.

Jimmy Saville was the king of TV, not sure what happened to him.

Most of all we had Charles J. Haughey buying private Islands, helicopter companies, tailor made shirts, knocking boots with floosies, while telling us to tighten our belts.

Grand stuff.

And you forgot about Big Ed loving Mona, the floosey.

Grayson wrote: »

We had a Renault 4 and then got a fiat ritmo. The ritmo was a piece of crap.

Ahh jaysus the 4 with the gear knob on the dash and a window you could barely squeez out a finger.
How the French with such a much warmer climate ever dreamt up such a constricted sweat box as a car is beyond me. :eek:

The Ritmo, another forgettable offering from Turin.

How Fiat are still in business and ended up being one of the biggest agri and construction machine manufacturers on the planet is a mystery worth studying.

oceanman

oceanman wrote: »

people think we are better off now...and maybe in some ways we are. but just look at the very high suicide rates we have now, mostly among young people, that we didn't have back in the day.

if the 80's were indeed so bad and there was less suicides, what does that say about people of today? weaker? more easily disillusioned? far to high expectations of themselves? if as some say, things are so much better, what's fueling the suicide on mass??? ahem the internet! social media!

so as you say they're mostly young people, does that mean the 80's young people were made of more? like how the WW2 generation were made of shocking hard stuff?? if that's the case would it be safe to say they deserve the snowflake badge then? im not stirring, I'm generally interested.

James Brown

...mind a person on a reasonable wage could buy a house.

oceanman

Matt Barrett wrote: »

...mind a person on a reasonable wage could buy a house.

indeed...where it takes a couple now on a reasonable wage to buy one!

angel eyes 2012

sunbeam wrote: »

In addition to their headscarves, women of my mother's generation often wore nylon overalls/housecoats, usually in hideous floral prints. You can see Hyacinth Bucket wearing one in some of the episodes of Keeping Up Appearances.

One of my distant American relatives actually thought they were some kind of a national costume.

My granny and her sister wore those nylon housecoats and they wore the headscarves when they went outside, usually in the winter just for added warmth. I don't think there were religious connotations. That same granny loved watching Sons and Daughters (I remember the theme tune) and Live at Three.

Grandeeod

angel eyes 2012 wrote: »

My granny and her sister wore those nylon housecoats and they wore the headscarves when they went outside, usually in the winter just for added warmth. I don't think there were religious connotations. That same granny loved watching Sons and Daughters (I remember the theme tune) and Live at Three.

Ah Live at Three and Thelma Mansfield. A teen lads fantasy Cougar of the 80s.:D

whitey1

A girl never got pregnant...some fella got a girl “in trouble”

Your parents hounded you to go to mass because they were worried about what the neighbors would say if you didn’t go

It was acceptable to use words like t1nk€r and the “N word”

Priests were held in the highest esteem and were not to be questioned never mind criticized

Couples did not shack up before marriage and unmarried couples didn’t vacation together

Grandeeod

If this thread has achieved anything beyond nostalgia, it has exposed the massive differences between 70s/80s Dublin and the rest of the country during the same time period. A different set of differences exist today. That's not right.

dxhound2005

A different set of differences. Venn diagrams were all the rage back in the day. I think some of those sets might intersect. If I knew what they were.

Mirafiori

Grayson wrote: »

We had a Renault 4 and then got a fiat ritmo. The ritmo was a piece of crap.

The Ritmo. The car that couldn't wait for the 80s!

BBFAN

rusty cole wrote:

if the 80's were indeed so bad and there was less suicides, what does that say about people of today? weaker? more easily disillusioned? far to high expectations of themselves? if as some say, things are so much better, what's fueling the suicide on mass??? ahem the internet! social media!

You've hit the nail on the head with the word "expectations". Back in the 80's yeah life was **** but everyone around us was suffering the same.

What I mean by that is yes there was rich and poor but the two worlds didn't really collide. The poor didn't have to look at what the rich had 24/7.

The Crowman

Big Nasty wrote: »

Murphy's Micro Quizm

The video game section was the best.

Itssoeasy

After reading this thread and being as I was born in 1985 so my childhood(at least the bits I remember well) was the nineties. I decided to go and watch both the RTÉ archives on ther website and a YouTube channel which has loads of clips of Irish tv from the 1980s and has the ads.

Anyway my point is it tallies up with what people were saying of how different the country was then to now.

Itssoeasy

After reading this thread and being as I was born in 1985 so my childhood(at least the bits I remember well) was the nineties. I decided to go and watch both the RTÉ archives on ther website and a YouTube channel which has loads of clips of Irish tv from the 1980s and has the ads.

Anyway my point is it tallies up with what people were saying of how different the country was then to now.

AndrewJRenko

Grandeeod wrote: »

And Radio Nova even had its own Nightclub - Nova Park. Bob Galico, the newsreader with his American Twang.:D

What ever happened to that place? Does the building still exist? Presumably every 2nd driver coming out of the place was half-cut at the time.

Hotblack Desiato

Mirafiori wrote: »

The Ritmo. The car that couldn't wait for the 80s!

Nah that was the Chrysler Horizon!

orangerhyme

I think the 80's didn't really end til sometime in the early 90s though.
Contraception wasn't legalized fully til 92/93.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in 93.
Unemployment was still around 15% in 1994.
Sometime around the mid to late 90's everything changed.

Free college education came in 1996.
Divorce came into law in 1996.
Esat digifone launched in 1997.
Unemployment was 10% in 1997 and was dropping fast.
Car registrations began to rise in 1996.
Indigo Internet launched in late 1995 but 1997 seemed to be the big year for internet.
Around this time population began to rise with returning Irish and emigration dropped also.

The Celtic Tiger started officially in 1995 but modern Ireland started in 1997 really I think.
It's funny that in our long history we only had 10 proper years of prosperity 97 to 07 and and the last few years maybe since around '15

mikemac2

No NCT, plenty of bangers on the road

If our car wouldn’t start it was totally normal for my Dad to ask a few lads on the street for a push start. Nobody would say no, wouldnt see you stuck. People are always rushing around these days stressed and probably would say they have no time

I’ve given push starts to anyone who asked me too. It was normal

the purple tin

Remember when people gave wedding presents to newlyweds rather than cash money.
You would get useful things for the house like cutlery set, crockery, bedsheets, an iron, towels and of course the ubiqitous toaster . It would sort of set the couple up in their new house, it must have been quite charming; to use a teapot or something and remember your wedding and think of the person who gave it to you.
I'm not sure when exactly it became the norm to give a big wedge of money in a card as a wedding present, but I imagine if you turned up to a wedding now with a toaster or the like under your arm they would look at you like you had just escaped from the nuthouse.

earlytobed

Born in 1966, so my childhood was the 1970s
No TV, spent my childhood outside, playing in woods, fields, games of soccer that went on for hours, swimming in the river etc
Cycled everywhere, roads were safe enough
Very plain wholesome food ( my older sister was in college in Cork around 1975, came home and made a version of pizza, spaghetti bolognaise. Exotic stuff that my Dad refused to eat)
Probably had 2 sets of clothes - I remember getting had-me-downs from my cousins in London in the post, exciting event when the parcel arrived.

The 80s were crap, I was a teenager, didn't like much of the 80s music, 70s stuff was better, in my opinion. I was the only one of our siblings(3 others) not to emigrate, I moved to Dublin in 1985. A lot of dereliction in the city, but the pubs were pretty good.

Things improved a lot in the 90s, I got a mortgage in 1991 at around 8.5%, by end of 1992 interest rates briefly hit around 16%, scary at the time.

70s/80s not a great time, church still had a big say, but compared to my parents time (30s, 40s, 50s) it was grand

Probably the best thing about that era was most people had just enough to get by, almost none of the consumerism that is such a part of today's society

Badly Drunk Boy

the purple tin wrote: »

I'm not sure when exactly it became the norm to give a big wedge of money in a card as a wedding present, but I imagine if you turned up to a wedding now with a toaster or the like under your arm they would look at you like you had just escaped from the nuthouse.

It's probably because people these days are 'living in sin' before getting married and have all those everyday appliances (and sets of delph and cutlery) that used to be given as presents.

mariaalice

The country got noticeably poorer in the 1980s as it happened gradually it was hard to conceptualise. There were huge PAYE tax and massive unemployment. There were a lot of bangers on the road and a lot of cars with no tax or insurance, car insurance got very expensive through the 1980s.

There was massive emigration to London and the UK, massive ques to get green cards to the US. Anecdotally anyone who worked in a building society in the 1980s will tell you about the struggles people had to pay mortgages and house were reposed and sold but it was kept quiet.

There was a lot of scams it was both a more lawful and more lawless society too. A lot of maladaptive behavior as people found a way to survive. It was a very class-conscious society a lot of petty snobberies.

Electric Sheep

mariaalice wrote: »

It was a very class-conscious society a lot of petty snobberies.

It still is.

jmayo

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Nah that was the Chrysler Horizon!

AFAIK the Talbot Horizon beat the Ritmo to European car of the year.
Who the fook picked these things. :eek:

mariaalice wrote: »

The country got noticeably poorer in the 1980s as it happened gradually it was hard to conceptualise. There were huge PAYE tax and massive unemployment. There were a lot of bangers on the road and a lot of cars with no tax or insurance, car insurance got very expensive through the 1980s.

And the insurance costs weren't helped when PMPA went bust because guess what folks ...

Yes a dodgy ex teacher and civil servant businessman and great friend of one cj haughey called Joe Moore who founded and ran a car insurance company called PMPA had basically set up a dodgy bank.
Well what do you know there were examples of badly run banks connected to fianna fail politicians in early 1980s.

BTW Patrick Gallagher, another friend of one cj haughey had also run a dodgy bank (Merchant banking) in late 70s and early 80s.
He did jail in Northern Ireland because there was no hope he would ever do it here with his connections.

Anyone see a trend here ?

I know people that worked in PMPA who were forcibly sent out to canvass for fianna fail politicians.
David Andrews was dumped off the PMPA panel because he voted against haughey in one of the heaves of the early 80s.

Anyway in 1983 the Government had to bail out PMPA which had over 30% of the car insurance market and they slapped on a 2% levy on every insurance policy.
A levy which lasted until the 1992 to be replaced by a 3% levy.
And there was also the AIB ICI collapse which also cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions.

Now does any of this sound vaguely familiar to what happened in the last 10 odd years ?

We do repeat our mistakes in this country, and they just get much bigger. :rolleyes:

Hotblack Desiato

Even Ken Bates (former owner of Chelsea FC) had a dodgy bank in Ireland in the 70s.