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What generation of Irish people have had it the toughest?

2

Comments

  • #32
    TheBiz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 511 ✭✭✭TheBiz


    Well the famine wouldn't have been great


  • #33
    Tigger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,701 ✭✭✭✭Tigger


    mansize wrote: »
    I don't think I've had it worst. The 80's were shït on a stick but I imagine it was a damn site better than the 40's

    The 80s were sound every year things got better
    Can't imagine the 40s were much fun


  • #34
    Tigger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,701 ✭✭✭✭Tigger


    TheBiz wrote: »
    Well the famine wouldn't have been great

    Yes but that was before the independence


  • #35
    unfortunately
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 213 ✭✭unfortunately


    Losty Dublin wrote:
    Defo the Generation Snowflakers, that have to get by on less than 10 meg broadband. Like OMG, I so can only go on just Snapchat and Insta at once; it's so not tote amazeballs that some of us have to live in this new two channel land

    F uck I'm sick of this "Generation Snowflake" s hite. It doesn't exist, how can you characterise the personalities of tens of thousands of people born over a couple of decades.


  • #36
    SafeSurfer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,182 ✭✭✭SafeSurfer


    Stheno wrote: »
    But your statement about those born in the seventies and a recession in the late nineties is factually incorrect?

    I never mentioned a recession in the nineties. I said the late noughties https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/noughties

    Relax

    Multo autem ad rem magis pertinet quallis tibi vide aris quam allis



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  • #37
    SafeSurfer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,182 ✭✭✭SafeSurfer


    unfortunately wrote: »
    F uck I'm sick of this "Generation Snowflake" s hite. It doesn't exist, how can you characterise the personalities of tens of thousands of people born over a couple of decades.

    You can't. But there are shared experiences and comparing them to other shared experiences in time is useful.

    Multo autem ad rem magis pertinet quallis tibi vide aris quam allis



  • #38
    CrabRevolution
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,175 ✭✭✭CrabRevolution


    I'd imagine the earlier the worse. Bad and all as the 70s or 80s were in economic or social terms, if you were born in the 20s you had all those problems plus little electricity, rampant diseases like TB, isolation, trade wars, only about 10% of people going on to finish secondary education etc.

    Kinda relative too, while they mightn't have appreciated it at the time, in the 20s they also lived in one of the few stable democracies in Europe. The idea of a certain faction winning independence and peacefully handing over power in an election afterwards was nearly unique to Ireland at the time.


  • #39
    unfortunately
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 213 ✭✭unfortunately


    SafeSurfer wrote:
    You can't. But there are shared experiences and comparing them to other shared experiences in time is useful.


    I know but there is a certain class of twat that uses the phrase to patronise young people or make out that my generation are overly sensitive whenever they criticise the established order.


  • #40
    The flying mouse
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,915 ✭✭✭The flying mouse


    Don't think no one has the monopoly on what was hard times and what was not as its all relevant, Sure looking at reeling in the years and you will see its all just swings and roundabouts that's still going on.


  • #41
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 5,094 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    CrabRevolution wrote: »
    I'd imagine the earlier the worse. Bad and all as the 70s or 80s were in economic or social terms, if you were born in the 20s you had all those problems plus little electricity, rampant diseases like TB, isolation, trade wars, only about 10% of people going on to finish secondary education etc

    On this point it should be borne in mind that they never had electricity etc so they wouldn't have missed them. As a businessman I know put it in recent years when comparing the 1980s recession with the recent one, this is much worse because we never had as much to lose in the 80s.


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  • #42
    andekwarhola
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,691 ✭✭✭andekwarhola


    Whatever generation are currently bitching about the previous one.

    Because, you know, they're all going to end up destitute in workhouses and dead by 30, naturally.


  • #43
    suicide_circus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,801 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    This one. We force our voluntarily homeless to live in four star hotels. The humanity.


  • #44
    petrolcan
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 898 ✭✭✭petrolcan


    jester77 wrote: »
    Those born in the 70's have had it very good. The sh*t only hit the fan for the ones coming after.

    Hah! Born in '72 and moved to the UK in '91. Didn't move by choice (don't regret it though)


  • #45
    Zxclnic
    Closed Accounts Posts: 611 ✭✭✭Zxclnic


    suicide_circus wrote: »
    This one. We force our voluntarily homeless to live in four star hotels. The humanity.

    Wrong thread. Public stoning on the one with 'fraud' in the title, you can't miss it, hurry on now before you miss some more cutting invective..


  • #46
    conorhal
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,098 ✭✭✭conorhal


    Lingua Franca wrote: »
    Frank McCourt and his brothers surely had it the worst.

    All of Frank McCourt's misery falls on the head of his alcoholic father, who gets off very lightly in the book for a man who drank while his family went hungry. You'll see the same deprivation today in children raised by junkies and alcoholics and over the past few years there have been some horrible stories in the papers about the condition of some children taken into care from such homes.

    I'd say the very worst generation to have been born into in this country would have been those born in the 1850s. The were born in the teeth of the famine, if they lived till their 70's they also saw grinding poverty, the first world war, a brutal war of independence, a civil war and things get worse economically before they died. Truly the worst period of Irish history to have had to live through before you have to go back to the likes of Cromwell's decimation of the population.


  • #47
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 12,694 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    It must be something to do with the internet and access to information, but unless you were rich all down the ages most people just survives fed themselves and the family and that was it even for middle class family until recent times it was the norm to just get by.

    In an Irish context anyone born from say 1945 to 1960 appeaser to have done well, for example if you got a job in the lower ranks of the public service/civil services/post office/ the Garda, and so on, in the fifties and sixties it means you were in a position to purchases a house in a decent area bring up a family and retired on a pension that is now greater that what you earned when you worked.

    Or if you were a farmer and managed to be cute enough to do well from the money you made, when thing were good in farming in the late seventies and early eighties, you invested in more land or brought property.

    Those sort of people have done well for themselves, but it was an accident of time and birth.


  • #48
    Widdershins
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,633 ✭✭✭✭Widdershins


    In many ways we are better off now than people were in the past but there's a big trade-off for all of the 'improvements'.People sometimes talk about a sense of community that's not there so much, and the difference in/effect on the natural world is staggering. I can do without a lot of mod cons and gadgets and would probably prefer a simpler lifestyle, but I'm appreciative of a lot of modern developments at the same time.


  • #49
    LordSutch
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12,069 ✭✭✭✭LordSutch


    SafeSurfer wrote: »
    Since independence which generation of Irish people have endured the toughest time? Since independence, because obviously the great famine would be No.1 otherwise.
    I think anyone born in the 1930s had it pretty bad. The Great Depression, rationing during the emergency, mass migration and hopelessness in the 1950s. Also those born in the 1970s. The mass unemployment of the 80s, crash of the late noughties, just when they were deep in debt.
    What do you think?

    Every decade since independence right up to the mid 90s I guess.

    Then things suddenly got much, much better. Almost as if the country finally woke up!


  • #50
    Zxclnic
    Closed Accounts Posts: 611 ✭✭✭Zxclnic


    LordSutch wrote: »
    Every decade since independence right up to the mid 90s I guess.

    Then things suddenly got much, much better. Almost as if the country finally woke up!

    It was Italia '90 what did it!


  • #51
    Rubberlegs
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,073 ✭✭✭Rubberlegs


    My Dad was born in the late 30s, and went to work on the building sites in London in the early 60s, for 20 odd years. He never said much , but it definitely wasn't a great time to be Irish in London. He wanted to come back home and came back here to find work in the early 80s, and it was struggle to find anything reliable. Unfortunately like quite a few other men, the years spent on the buildings working hard for us all, were spent exposed to asbestos dust, and he passed away within 4 months of being diagnosed with mesothelioma 6yrs ago. There was a brilliant book written on the men who went to England in the 50s /60s , and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it,.but it is s fascinating insight into a generation that didn't have it easy at all.


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  • #52
    ytpe2r5bxkn0c1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ytpe2r5bxkn0c1


    50s right through to the 80s were very tough for the average family in Ireland. Even with a full time job families lived hand to mouth. Third level education was a pipedream for most. Even second level was not available to many for part of this time. Luxuries were very few. A house phone was a luxury. A mortgage was crippling. Transport infrastructure and communications were poor. Holidays almost non-existent


  • #53
    tim_holsters
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,466 ✭✭✭tim_holsters


    73Cat wrote: »
    My Dad was born in the late 30s, and went to work on the building sites in London in the early 60s, for 20 odd years. He never said much , but it definitely wasn't a great time to be Irish in London. He wanted to come back home and came back here to find work in the early 80s, and it was struggle to find anything reliable. Unfortunately like quite a few other men, the years spent on the buildings working hard for us all, were spent exposed to asbestos dust, and he passed away within 4 months of being diagnosed with mesothelioma 6yrs ago. There was a brilliant book written on the men who went to England in the 50s /60s , and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it,.but it is s fascinating insight into a generation that didn't have it easy at all.

    Don't be daft the 60's was a great time to be Irish in London, you could earn a good living but down roots and raise a family if you wished in one of the greatest cities in the world and not every Mick worked on the bleedin buildings. Tough on your old man maybe but his is only one story.


  • #54
    ytpe2r5bxkn0c1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ytpe2r5bxkn0c1


    tim_holsters wrote: »
    Don't be daft the 60's was a great time to be Irish in London, you could earn a good living but down roots and raise a family if you wished in one of the greatest cities in the world and not every Mick worked on the bleedin buildings. Tough on your old man maybe but his is only one story.

    Were you there? I saw many Irish in London in the mid 60s and life was very far from easy for them.


  • #55
    Rubberlegs
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,073 ✭✭✭Rubberlegs


    tim_holsters wrote: »
    Don't be daft the 60's was a great time to be Irish in London, you could earn a good living but down roots and raise a family if you wished in one of the greatest cities in the world and not every Mick worked on the bleedin buildings. Tough on your old man maybe but his is only one story.

    Whatever about the 60s, the late 70s and early 80s certainly wasn't a great time there with all the IRA antics going on. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough there. I was more referring to the 20yr time period he was there. I never suggested "every Mick" worked on the buildings. One of quite a few stories, I believe.


  • #56
    tim_holsters
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,466 ✭✭✭tim_holsters


    Brayson Helpful Weirdo wrote: »
    Were you there? I saw many Irish in London in the mid 60s and life was very far from easy for them.

    No mate I wasn't. A number of relatives were though all did well for themselves. Many is not all, is it even a lot?

    As I said a great time to be Irish in London the 60's. There's hard luck stories everywhere mate, what you gonna do?


  • #57
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 745 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    It's interesting to consider how much the jump in living standards even between about 1993 and 2003 was like night and day in this country. I remember being in my early teens when things started getting rich during the boom and it felt like something changed in around 2003 going into 2004 - like the older idea I had in my head of Ireland being somewhat poor was completely redundant and that peoples lives had become decadently easy. I felt kind of disturbed by it at the time, like there was something evil about kids my age growing up in such luxurious conditions - probably a remnant of catholic guilt and guilt about how hard people who lived throughout Ireland in the past had it. Not even thinking of access to cash (we weren't rich ourselves), moreso the availability to others of all the entertainment and comfortable beds, big houses with wooden floors, comfortable chairs, kids having phones etc. - just seemed like everyone was spoiled and being spoiled was bad or something. I used to feel that our teachers probably saw us as weak for not having to grow up in the crap times they did! that said I can remember when I was fairly young things were very tight, not so tight we suffered dreadfully but by the standards of today definitely a lot tighter with money/resources (eg. 10 p chomp bar once in a while being only treat, no chance of a toy during the year apart from at christmas, not even at birthday, no kids up for birthday parties because stuff would cost money etc.)


  • #58
    Rubberlegs
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,073 ✭✭✭Rubberlegs


    tim_holsters wrote: »
    No mate I wasn't. A number of relatives were though all did well for themselves. Many is not all, is it even a lot?

    As I said a great time to be Irish in London the 60's. There's hard luck stories everywhere mate, what you gonna do?


    Not your mate. Whatever.


  • #59
    tim_holsters
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,466 ✭✭✭tim_holsters


    73Cat wrote: »
    Whatever about the 60s, the late 70s and early 80s certainly wasn't a great time there with all the IRA antics going on. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough there. I was more referring to the 20yr time period he was there. I never suggested "every Mick" worked on the buildings. One of quite a few stories, I believe.

    Fair enough mate, I think you're wrong about the 70's and 80's too mind although I understand your perspective re the Provo's.


  • #60
    tim_holsters
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,466 ✭✭✭tim_holsters


    73Cat wrote: »
    Not your mate. Whatever.

    Ha ha it's just a figure of speech bud, is that better?


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  • #61
    ytpe2r5bxkn0c1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ytpe2r5bxkn0c1


    tim_holsters wrote: »
    No mate I wasn't. A number of relatives were though all did well for themselves. Many is not all, is it even a lot?

    As I said a great time to be Irish in London the 60's. There's hard luck stories everywhere mate, what you gonna do?

    And I ain't your mate, or bud, either.

    The 60s were definitely not a great time for the MAJORITY of the Irish in London. You don't seem to have any idea whatsoever as to what life was like there then.


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