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Rose-tinted views of the past in Ireland

2

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,464 ✭✭✭✭lawred2


    Bobtheman wrote: »
    Ah jesus give it a rest. With your Liberal whining. People are entitled to recollect the past even through Rose tinted glasses. One thing we didn't have is nanny state liberalism and bloody face book
    Don't kid yourself that your age group aren't racist too that's when your heads are out of yer arses
    As for the poverty stuff Ireland was even in the 80s a lot richer than most of the World

    a strangely aggressive response


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    I often see people younger than me reminiscing about things that are completely false. For instance lads in their twenties or thirties harking back to the good old days when they played outside instead of playing video games. If you're under the age of forty home computers and video game consoles have existed all your life.


    And before them were the snooker & pool halls and video game arcades, where you could shelter from the suns rays all day. "outside" meant cider crazed youth time, down a lane or in a park.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,972 ✭✭✭mikemac2


    Moore Street full of immigrants running their hair salons and phone repair shops. No Irish left, a bloody disgrace

    Says Mary who emigrated to England decades ago


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,798 ✭✭✭goose2005


    It's a weird one and a phenomenon I've noticed too on online groups. FWIW, in my experience, Dublin is safer, cheerier than it was in the 1990s when I first started wandering about it regularly. I still hear of break ins and muggings but especially the latter seem far less common than back then. It is strange seeing people saying how much better things were back in the day when my abiding impression of Dublin in the late '70s and the '80s was a poor city being destroyed by heroin addiction. Of course addiction and all concommitant problems still exist but they don't seem to define the city the way they used to so it seems strange that people are like "ah back in the day things were great." The amount of people who think that cops should be battering people is frightening too, everyone invokes Lugs Brannigan like he put the whole place to rights.

    the 80s/90's was also the golden age of joyriding and bank robberies


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,471 ✭✭✭EdgeCase


    Right.

    There’s an underestimation of how poor it was in places. But also not everybody was poor. The south side existed. The we were all poor doesn’t seem right either.

    I remember as a kid Dublin was completely smog bound. Everyone in the suburbs and city burnt coal and probably lots of badly adjusted oil boilers in use too. Your clothes would come in off the line with large 'smuts' (bits of unburnt soot and coal) on them.

    As a kid I had constant really bad nose and throat problems that I now attribute to air pollution. I ended up with damage to my eardrum that required surgery later on. I never had any issues since I moved away from Dublin and since the smog died down. It was awful. If you haven't experienced it, you've no idea.

    I also remember my mum being caught in 3 bank raids! She went into labour and lost a baby after one of them. Two of my aunts were followed and mugged at their doors, my neighbour was beaten up and we had issues with drug needles on our playing field in a fairly posh part of South Dublin.

    There were also dogs roaming absolutely everywhere and dog muck all over the place.

    I hate to say it but it was a total dump at one stage.

    Dublin is tame compared to the 80s and 90s. It really wasn't one of its brightest eras.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,281 ✭✭✭CrankyHaus


    Great example of the point at hand: there were no problems that were exlcusive to Dublin! They were always nationwide, there were people taking drugs in Sligo and Castlebar and Tipperary and even in little villages. There was the perception that it was a Dublin only problem, and the perception has changed to understand that its everywhere: its only the perception that has changed.

    You're wrong and you misunderstood my point. I said "widespread drug use" of the kind that was normalised in Dublin long before little villages, not the town oddball smoking a joint. I've seen the changes in a relative's village in the south-west. The place used to be as rural as you can get. Years ago the worst that could happen was the local alco's run ins with the Guards over poitin and my relatives would be scandalised over it. Since then lots of people have been moved in from Limerick City as part of its regeneration and you have stabbings in the village and major drug seizures in the countryside nearby, not to mention burglaries off the chain.


  • Registered Users Posts: 105 ✭✭FelaniaMump


    CrankyHaus wrote: »
    You're wrong and you misunderstood my point. I said "widespread drug use" of the kind that was normalised in Dublin long before little villages, not the town oddball smoking a joint. I've seen the changes in a relative's village in the south-west. The place used to be as rural as you can get. Years ago the worst that could happen was the local alco's run ins with the Guards over poitin and my relatives would be scandalised over it. Since then lots of people have been moved in from Limerick City as part of its regeneration and you have stabbings in the village and major drug seizures in the countryside nearby, not to mention burglaries off the chain.

    I didn't misunderstand your point, I disagreed with it, and you are further proving mine. You think that because you occasionally went to a village in the SW you know that the drug problem was exclusive to Dublin until the 90's?
    Cop on! There were serious hard drugs all over the place well before then, you just dont know about it. Anecdotes are not data.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,147 ✭✭✭TheIrishGrover


    Yeah. Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. I mean, I hear people lamenting the 70's Ireland for God's sake. They forget the crippling poverty and unemployment. Unemployment rates that would be FAR higher if it were not for the staggering amounts of emigration.

    People would emigrate to the UK and the US and basically would never be seen again because transport costs were SO high and, in many cases, they were there illegally.

    Standard of living in general was very poor: Food was basic and hadn't changed much since the 40s. The economic climate showed no signs of improving and the whole world was deep in the middle of a cold war.

    And as for the vaunted "respect for authority". There is a difference between respecting authority and kowtowing to the church and an overtly corrupt and self-serving government. People say "Oh, look at all the perverts and sex-crimes you have today. Didn't have that in my day". You did. But it wasn't reported because, however bad women have it today, it was so so SO much worse back then. But they had no voice because of said "authorities".

    Perverts back then were the gay community: THEY were the ones who were assaulting young boys everywhere. Not the "authorities"

    I'm sure, 40 years from now people will look upon the utopia that was 201X. Forgetting the rapid rise in racist, isolationist nationalism especially in the US and eastern Europe. The rampant homophobia in eastern Europe. The constant fear of terrorism and the hate-mongering that is both a symptom and cause of it. They will forget the boom and bust of the world economy. Will forget the people who bought houses only for them to be worthless a year later. They will forget that right now our economy is in the same place as it was at the height of the Celtic Tiger yet we have housing shortages and homelessness and always will have them.

    They will point out the further merging of peoples and cultures but will forget people drownling in their thousands as they flee war-torn countries to countries that don't want them or can't handle them. They will forget the photo of a drowned baby laying face down on a popular pleasure beach.

    They will laugh at the quaintness of emerging Social Media platforms but will ignore how they became a cesspool of hate and profiteering and agenda-driven misinformation.

    They will point out how we were never so well off but will forget that we had to work harder and longer than ever before and use transport infrastructure that was not up to the task. Will forget people's 4 hour daily commute.

    But, nostalgia is not new and will be here forever. Each generation looks back at the past with rose-tinted glasses and at the next generation as a bunch of lazy, entitled snowflakes (God I hate that term). It's just that now we are in an age where the average persons reminiscing can reach an extremely wide audience instantly and easily.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,736 ✭✭✭Irish Guitarist


    They existed but we couldn't afford them!


    My father bought an Atari 2600 in around 1984. I doubt he paid that much for it because it had already been around since 1977. And I bought a Commodore 64 with my confirmation money in 1989. Things like the NES would have been difficult to get here but there were plenty of other consoles or computers that didn't cost a fortune.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,471 ✭✭✭EdgeCase


    Remember when Twitter used to be nice and we all went out on lovely #Tweetups in pubs.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    mariaalice wrote: »
    There was different crime, also a lot of people were locked up unofficially, In the mid-twentieth century, Grangegorman Mental Hospital had patient population of approximately 2,000 people, staff also live in. Even in 1965 it had 1,628 patients.

    There was an asylum/mental hospital in Galway with even more inmates/patients and when it was to be closed down there was protests locally about loosing the jobs because it was a big employer. imagine protesting to keep a mental hospital open because it was a big employer.

    There is a weird omerta or amnesia about these homes because very often the family were complicit in locking people up. Remember a lecturer saying that when families were concerned about how land would be inherited, if they couldn't marry-off a sibling, or if the sibling wasn't capable of working/emigrating, it wasn't unusual for families to dump them in these institutions. The populations of these places were massive in the 1950's and 60's.

    Always think it's telling how much vocations to religious life declined when contraceptives became available and family sizes got smaller. Beyond depressing to think how many young people must have been forced into the priesthood/convent so they wouldn't be counted as part of any inheritance.

    Ireland was a profoundly sick society at the time, and that wasn't just being imposed on it by Church and State.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    Right.

    There’s an underestimation of how poor it was in places. But also not everybody was poor. The south side existed. The we were all poor doesn’t seem right either.

    But even the middle class were so much poorer than equivalent today, my mum and dad's families were perfectly comfortable but said things like going on family holidays were very rare for instance


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,013 ✭✭✭✭James Brown


    JupiterKid wrote: »
    I’m member of a couple of FB groups that put up old photos of Dublin and other places in Ireland and they are interesting to see.

    One thing I note from many of the comments from some of the members posting up is stuff like “how times were so much better back then”, “no crime”, “respect for authority” and how Dublin and Ireland have gone “to hell” in the past 20 years.

    Why the selective nostalgia of a much poorer country where there was real hardship, the religious reigned supreme and abused countless vulnerable women and children?

    Some posters on these sites even come out with casual racism and homophobia. Would these posters (mostly older people I note) prefer a return to those times?

    Thoughts?

    I went to a Christian Brothers. Some of them beat the crap out of us and there's a facebook group for the area with photos and thick with nostalgia like it was all the good ol' days. I stick my oar in now and again ;)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 16,013 ✭✭✭✭James Brown


    wakka12 wrote: »
    But even the middle class were so much poorer than equivalent today, my mum and dad's families were perfectly comfortable but said things like going on family holidays were very rare for instance

    The 'middle class' is a con. It's designed to make the public feel like they've progressed.
    Middle class use to mean a professional or management type, now it's anyone with any kind of a job. The rest are spongers.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,952 ✭✭✭✭Stoner


    Some people are never happy!

    I grew up in the 80 and 90's

    Everyone ate peanuts and marathon bars.

    Nobody I knew had a nut allergy.

    That's the truth.

    The rest, I don't know.

    (We all ate glutton filled bread too)


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,952 ✭✭✭✭Stoner


    I often see people younger than me reminiscing about things that are completely false. For instance lads in their twenties or thirties harking back to the good old days when they played outside instead of playing video games. If you're under the age of forty home computers and video game consoles have existed all your life.

    We'd less cars though. More room for football


  • Site Banned Posts: 2,799 ✭✭✭Bobtheman


    Nanny state liberalism is the belief that liberal values such as abortion must be accepted by all or you are an idiot. That we must regulate the ****e out of everything even though we don't enforce even existing law. Penality points are a perfect example.
    That we can't be critical of anybody's choice to have children even if it exploits a surrogate in the third world or the child will be dependent on welfare handouts
    We can't raise immigration as an issue for fear the PC police will call us racist.
    I could go on and on.
    Good night


  • Site Banned Posts: 2,799 ✭✭✭Bobtheman


    Bobtheman wrote: »
    Nanny state liberalism is the belief that liberal values such as abortion must be accepted by all or you are an idiot. That we must regulate the ****e out of everything even though we don't enforce even existing law. Penality points are a perfect example.
    That we can't be critical of anybody's choice to have children even if it exploits a surrogate in the third world or the child will be dependent on welfare handouts
    We can't raise immigration as an issue for fear the PC police will call us racist.
    I could go on and on.
    Good night
    I'm replying to a previous poster


  • Registered Users Posts: 359 ✭✭antietam1


    Cheap holidays came about in the mid 60's( Freddie Laker and all that)
    Went to Lorette de mar with my folks then it seemed as if every second person was Irish.


  • Registered Users Posts: 105 ✭✭FelaniaMump


    They will point out the further merging of peoples and cultures but will forget people drownling in their thousands as they flee war-torn countries to countries that don't want them or can't handle them. They will forget the photo of a drowned baby laying face down on a popular pleasure beach.



    They will point out how we were never so well off but will forget that we had to work harder and longer than ever before and use transport infrastructure that was not up to the task. Will forget people's 4 hour daily commute.

    I was with you up to this point. I've heard people say this before and it is such nonsense! Working longer and harder than ever before? PLEASE!! In days gone by we would have worked on farms seven days a week, worked in service from dawn til late with one day off a month, worked in factories for 14 hour days alongside our children. Later we would have worked a 6 day week as standard, with no working time act, no holiday entitlement, no maternity leave,no parental leave...
    Working longer and harder than ever before? What a joke!!


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  • Registered Users Posts: 105 ✭✭FelaniaMump


    wakka12 wrote: »
    But even the middle class were so much poorer than equivalent today, my mum and dad's families were perfectly comfortable but said things like going on family holidays were very rare for instance

    More nonsense. Sure, my relatives middle class family rarely had holidays, but they bought a 4 bed semi in the Dublin suburbs on one wage for three times an annual salary! Middle class kids now have holidays but live in insecure rental homes...its swings and roundabouts.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,256 ✭✭✭Ubbquittious


    There are plenty of people who managed to carve out a nice life for themselves back in the day and the vast majority never ended up in a Magdalene home or being abused by a priest. For a good lot of people I'd even say they had a nicer life than would be allowed now.


    I think the OP like many people is looking at the past with sh1t-tinted glasses with no effort being made to find out what daily life was like back then.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,830 ✭✭✭✭freshpopcorn


    I actually know a gay guy and he preffered being gay in the past because there was no questions/pressure on him to get married/etc.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,798 ✭✭✭goose2005


    More nonsense. Sure, my relatives middle class family rarely had holidays, but they bought a 4 bed semi in the Dublin suburbs on one wage for three times an annual salary! Middle class kids now have holidays but live in insecure rental homes...its swings and roundabouts.

    yeah, it's a bit like being told, "Sure, you won't be able to buy a house or have a steady job, but ...there's a lot more on telly these days!"


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,464 ✭✭✭✭lawred2


    Bobtheman wrote: »
    Nanny state liberalism is the belief that liberal values such as abortion must be accepted by all or you are an idiot. That we must regulate the ****e out of everything even though we don't enforce even existing law. Penality points are a perfect example.
    That we can't be critical of anybody's choice to have children even if it exploits a surrogate in the third world or the child will be dependent on welfare handouts
    We can't raise immigration as an issue for fear the PC police will call us racist.
    I could go on and on.
    Good night

    ah yeah - the good auld times - when people minded their own business by being critical and judgmental of other people's business


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,138 ✭✭✭realitykeeper


    JupiterKid wrote: »
    Would these posters (mostly older people I note) prefer a return to those times?

    Thoughts?

    Older people lived in those times and they still live now so I would say they are in a position to make an informed decision on which was best. Times past or the present. The older people say (quite rightly in my opinion) that the olden days were better. OP may not like this finding but the OP`s likes are of no consequence.

    I say bring back the 1950s complete with strap wielding nuns and brothers brandishing implements in the art of discipline. Bring back the Good Friday`s and the devotions. Bring back the ban on divorce, contraception and the more recent abominations. Ban books and movies that fail in moral standing and may total chastity be observed in all circumstances outside wedlock. Am I not correct?

    Mind you. I think the Torah could and should be adopted in our renewed Catholicism, even though it was not part of it in the past.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,816 ✭✭✭skooterblue2


    murpho999 wrote: »
    If there was no crime back then, then why was there a police force?

    Look at the statistics back then:
    5-8 murders a year
    the odd break in by the usual suspects
    Drugs were only something in the Flats in Dublin.
    I never saw drugs growing up.
    Once I returned to Waterford city 5 years ago, I was starting to see srynges in the park. I see heroin not shooting up but seeing their souless eyes around the city.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Older people lived in those times and they still live now so I would say they are in a position to make an informed decision on which was best. Times past or the present. The older people say (quite rightly in my opinion) that the olden days were better. OP may not like this finding but the OP`s likes are of no consequence.

    I say bring back the 1950s complete with strap wielding nuns and brothers brandishing implements in the art of discipline. Bring back the Good Friday`s and the devotions. Bring back the ban on divorce, contraception and the more recent abominations. Ban books and movies that fail in moral standing and may total chastity be observed in all circumstances outside wedlock. Am I not correct?

    Mind you. I think the Torah could and should be adopted in our renewed Catholicism, even though it was not part of it in the past.


    Ban everything and beat the head offof everything else!!!!!!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,070 ✭✭✭Franz Von Peppercorn


    Look at the statistics back then:
    5-8 murders a year
    the odd break in by the usual suspects
    Drugs were only something in the Flats in Dublin.
    I never saw drugs growing up.
    Once I returned to Waterford city 5 years ago, I was starting to see srynges in the park. I see heroin not shooting up but seeing their souless eyes around the city.

    I think that drug problems have spread more than they used to but there was lots of it in Dublin back in the day.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,070 ✭✭✭Franz Von Peppercorn


    10 to a room.

    What's not to like?

    Ten to a room is far more common these days than twenty years ago. The 90s weren’t the 1910s.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,638 ✭✭✭✭Witcher


    My family told me one of their neighbours in the late 50/60's had one of their sons sleep in a press because they were that tight for space in a two bedroom house:pac: Just pushed the kids bed into it :pac: They recall it like it was great times


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,070 ✭✭✭Franz Von Peppercorn


    Witcher wrote: »
    My family told me one of their neighbours in the late 50/60's had one of their sons sleep in a press because they were that tight for space in a two bedroom house:pac: Just pushed the kids bed into it :pac: They recall it like it was great times

    The op said 20 years ago. 1998.

    In any case if you what to see ten to a room I’m sure there’s plenty of Dublin rentals like that.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 15,638 ✭✭✭✭Witcher


    The op said 20 years ago. 1998.

    In any case if you what to see ten to a room I’m sure there’s plenty of Dublin rentals like that.

    Sorry I didn't know you were policing the thread, get a life ya clown:pac:


  • Registered Users Posts: 938 ✭✭✭Ruraldweller56


    I often see people younger than me reminiscing about things that are completely false. For instance lads in their twenties or thirties harking back to the good old days when they played outside instead of playing video games. If you're under the age of forty home computers and video game consoles have existed all your life.

    Very interesting perspective. An awful lot of folk I know under the age of 40 (30 in many cases) have spent their entire lives being oppressed by the Catholic Church. Despite barely ever setting foot inside a church.

    Go figure.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Very interesting perspective. An awful lot of folk I know under the age of 40 (30 in many cases) have spent their entire lives being oppressed by the Catholic Church. Despite barely ever setting foot inside a church.

    Go figure.

    It's an interesting thing. In 1780 Brian Merriman wrote the Midnight Court, describing (amongst other things) how sexually actively Ireland was. In the 1850's, most prostitutes in New York were Irish, and in the 1910's one of the largest red light districts in Europe was in Dublin. Irish people seemingly got very oppressed for a very brief period but luckily we've bounced back pretty well...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,261 ✭✭✭Baron Kurtz


    Yeah. Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. I mean, I hear people lamenting the 70's Ireland for God's sake. They forget the crippling poverty and unemployment. Unemployment rates that would be FAR higher if it were not for the staggering amounts of emigration.

    People would emigrate to the UK and the US and basically would never be seen again because transport costs were SO high and, in many cases, they were there illegally.

    Standard of living in general was very poor: Food was basic and hadn't changed much since the 40s. The economic climate showed no signs of improving and the whole world was deep in the middle of a cold war.

    And as for the vaunted "respect for authority". There is a difference between respecting authority and kowtowing to the church and an overtly corrupt and self-serving government. People say "Oh, look at all the perverts and sex-crimes you have today. Didn't have that in my day". You did. But it wasn't reported because, however bad women have it today, it was so so SO much worse back then. But they had no voice because of said "authorities".

    Perverts back then were the gay community: THEY were the ones who were assaulting young boys everywhere. Not the "authorities"

    I'm sure, 40 years from now people will look upon the utopia that was 201X. Forgetting the rapid rise in racist, isolationist nationalism especially in the US and eastern Europe. The rampant homophobia in eastern Europe. The constant fear of terrorism and the hate-mongering that is both a symptom and cause of it. They will forget the boom and bust of the world economy. Will forget the people who bought houses only for them to be worthless a year later. They will forget that right now our economy is in the same place as it was at the height of the Celtic Tiger yet we have housing shortages and homelessness and always will have them.

    They will point out the further merging of peoples and cultures but will forget people drownling in their thousands as they flee war-torn countries to countries that don't want them or can't handle them. They will forget the photo of a drowned baby laying face down on a popular pleasure beach.

    They will laugh at the quaintness of emerging Social Media platforms but will ignore how they became a cesspool of hate and profiteering and agenda-driven misinformation.

    They will point out how we were never so well off but will forget that we had to work harder and longer than ever before and use transport infrastructure that was not up to the task. Will forget people's 4 hour daily commute.

    But, nostalgia is not new and will be here forever. Each generation looks back at the past with rose-tinted glasses and at the next generation as a bunch of lazy, entitled snowflakes (God I hate that term). It's just that now we are in an age where the average persons reminiscing can reach an extremely wide audience instantly and easily.

    I read this with the same verve and incisiveness in its delivery as a monologue from a bristling Mark Renton.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,645 ✭✭✭Qrt


    A lot of the reason there's a perception of kids not playing outside is because they're not allowed to. Their mammy read something on "da facebook" about a man in a van going around Dublin (Ohio) and now locks their kid in the sitting room when she puts the washing on the line.

    Don't even get me started on parents buying their eight year olds smartphones, then being shocked when some nutter gets in contact. I'm only hitting 20, I feel like I was the last age group to get a smartphone at a responsible age, my first phone was an LG flip to text me ma when she was in work. It's actually shocking the amount of parents giving their kids iPhones without restriction, or the amount of toddlers reared on iPads.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,301 ✭✭✭Flesh Gorden


    EdgeCase wrote: »
    I remember as a kid Dublin was completely smog bound. Everyone in the suburbs and city burnt coal and probably lots of badly adjusted oil boilers in use too. Your clothes would come in off the line with large 'smuts' (bits of unburnt soot and coal) on them.

    As a kid I had constant really bad nose and throat problems that I now attribute to air pollution.

    ....

    There were also dogs roaming absolutely everywhere and dog muck all over the place.

    I hate to say it but it was a total dump at one stage.

    Dublin is tame compared to the 80s and 90s. It really wasn't one of its brightest eras.

    I've very similar memories growing up in the northside of Cork City in the late 80s and into the 90s.

    I'd bad asthma until I was 13, the smog was constant and tended to drift up to where we lived.
    Reading the above, I can remember the smell of it and those smut things that would be on the washing.

    Damp was another problem you just got used to.
    Leaky single pane windows, no heating other than a coal fire and a school with black mould everywhere from the leaking roof.


    Similar issue with loose dogs. The Dog Pound next to the bus station in Cork City centre was always overflowing and I think they'd a second one out near Togher.

    White dogshít on the footpaths, regular dogshít everywhere else.
    Same with chewing gum, a kaleidoscope all over the foothpaths.


    The smell of the old green CIE buses and the double deckers feeling like they were going to topple over at any stage, as they wobbled around corners.

    Having to be weary of flashers and other perverts who'd brazenly come up talking to us as kids in town.


    Queuing for everything, everywhere for absolute ages along with everyone else.


    Very few cars in our estate, only a handful. Usually in such poor rusty condition, no one would be bothered to try and steal them.

    Hearing someone had been in a car crash of any kind, meant they were either dead or were left with life changing injuries.

    Knowing that if someone went missing, that was pretty much it.
    You'd never know what happened to them or hear from them again.


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,500 ✭✭✭✭DEFTLEFTHAND


    It's an interesting thing. In 1780 Brian Merriman wrote the Midnight Court, describing (amongst other things) how sexually actively Ireland was. In the 1850's, most prostitutes in New York were Irish, and in the 1910's one of the largest red light districts in Europe was in Dublin. Irish people seemingly got very oppressed for a very brief period but luckily we've bounced back pretty well...

    You say that like it was a good thing.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,516 ✭✭✭✭ohnonotgmail


    Older people lived in those times and they still live now so I would say they are in a position to make an informed decision on which was best. Times past or the present. The older people say (quite rightly in my opinion) that the olden days were better. OP may not like this finding but the OP`s likes are of no consequence.

    I say bring back the 1950s complete with strap wielding nuns and brothers brandishing implements in the art of discipline. Bring back the Good Friday`s and the devotions. Bring back the ban on divorce, contraception and the more recent abominations. Ban books and movies that fail in moral standing and may total chastity be observed in all circumstances outside wedlock. Am I not correct?

    Mind you. I think the Torah could and should be adopted in our renewed Catholicism, even though it was not part of it in the past.


    You really should keep those kinds of fantasies private. I'm sure there are many documentaries on the net that contain what you want.
    Am I not correct?

    If you are ever correct it is only by blind luck.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,137 ✭✭✭Odhinn


    Older people lived in those times and they still live now so I would say they are in a position to make an informed decision on which was best. Times past or the present. The older people say (quite rightly in my opinion) that the olden days were better. OP may not like this finding but the OP`s likes are of no consequence.

    I say bring back the 1950s complete with strap wielding nuns and brothers brandishing implements in the art of discipline. Bring back the Good Friday`s and the devotions. Bring back the ban on divorce, contraception and the more recent abominations. Ban books and movies that fail in moral standing and may total chastity be observed in all circumstances outside wedlock. Am I not correct?

    Mind you. I think the Torah could and should be adopted in our renewed Catholicism, even though it was not part of it in the past.




    Did you actually mean "strap on wielding" nuns? Asking for a friend.


  • Site Banned Posts: 1,253 ✭✭✭sk8erboii


    Older people lived in those times and they still live now so I would say they are in a position to make an informed decision on which was best. Times past or the present. The older people say (quite rightly in my opinion) that the olden days were better. OP may not like this finding but the OP`s likes are of no consequence.

    I say bring back the 1950s complete with strap wielding nuns and brothers brandishing implements in the art of discipline. Bring back the Good Friday`s and the devotions. Bring back the ban on divorce, contraception and the more recent abominations. Ban books and movies that fail in moral standing and may total chastity be observed in all circumstances outside wedlock. Am I not correct?

    Mind you. I think the Torah could and should be adopted in our renewed Catholicism, even though it was not part of it in the past.

    Ah yes. Remember the time when Ireland was a backwater satellite state? The good ol days when it was dull and depressing?

    Pepperidge farm remembers


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,138 ✭✭✭realitykeeper


    Odhinn wrote: »
    Ban everything and beat the head offof everything else!!!!!!

    Repeat as Gaeilge and now you`re talking my language.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,138 ✭✭✭realitykeeper


    sk8erboii wrote: »
    Ah yes. Remember the time when Ireland was a backwater satellite state? The good ol days when it was dull and depressing?

    Pepperidge farm remembers

    You may not like the past but you might dislike the future more. Time will tell.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,673 ✭✭✭✭Galwayguy35


    The summer of 1990 was great craic, and anyone who says it wasn't can go fook themselves.


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  • Site Banned Posts: 1,253 ✭✭✭sk8erboii


    You may not like the past but you might dislike the future more. Time will tell.

    LOL so youre banking on the future being horrible to make yourself feel better?

    No wonder youre so bitter. Im enjoying the present


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,994 ✭✭✭c.p.w.g.w


    The ease of access to information is a strange one for me.

    Remember when i was younger(in the 90's) waiting for the football scores, or checking the teletext. It was more exciting.

    Now i phone buzzes and informs me which is great. But there was something about the teletext, or avoiding the news and text and waiting for MOTD.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,874 ✭✭✭Edgware


    You say that like it was a good thing.
    They were good Catholic prostitutes not those Protestant ones who wouldn't do doggy style


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,874 ✭✭✭Edgware


    The summer of 1990 was great craic, and anyone who says it wasn't can go fook themselves.
    You'd know all about that, w........ r


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    You say that like it was a good thing.

    I don't make any judgement on it either way. It is what it is.

    That being said, I have no time for anyone policing anyone else's sexual life, once the parties involved are able to legally consent. I have less than no time for people who think they can continue to police people's bodies by keeping prostitution illegal.


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