Things that have changed in Ireland over the last 30 years

Ravelleman

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

Homosexuality and contraception are no longer illegal. And the Catholic church has lost its death grip on the nation.

It's seeking a morning-after pill for abortion legislation though.

Voodoomelon

keeponhurling wrote: »

Indeed, this is noticeable.
Why the hell is this though? People should be more aware of what food is good/bad for you.
There is still the same levels of sport, even more choice if anything.
There are now gyms.
The pubs are quieter.
There are more slimmer foreign nationals who we can learn from.

Boombastic wrote: »

Back in the day everyone cycled or walked.

Not even down to exercise I don't think, its the availability of more sh1te food. Diets were more plain with fair less variety with lower saturated fats and sugars.

Plenty of people are just as active, just the diet is worse.

shockwave

Music shops that had actual records in them, you could spend hours browsing through all the LP's and singles.

Ben D Bus

Nobody had lattes and panini for lunch.

Ban Gardai (and they were officially Ban Gardai) had totally impractical uniforms.

Schools smelled of chalk dust. What did that do to our lungs I wonder!!

Do many people wear snorkel anoraks anymore?

Mink

The libraries were used a lot more

People didn't really use face creams, lotions, hair products, anti-ageing thingys

WAY more free parking in Dublin (and probably most town centres in Ireland)

Braces (orthodontic) were very uncommon

Everyone had an address & phone # book and you'd normally remember a good few phone numbers for people you called a lot

Irish Guitarist

The number of non white people has increased dramatically. I didn't see a black person in real life until I was about nine years old. It was many years later when I saw another one. I never thought I'd see the day when black people with Irish accents would be common.

The number of shops selling cheap tat. Years ago there was one Pound Shop in Carlow. Now there's about five of them in one street (although instead of selling things for a pound it will be something like €2.00 or €1.49).

It used to be customary for every tree in Ireland to have a plastic bag hanging from its branches. Trees still have cans, plastic bottles and sweet wrappers lodged in their branches but a white plastic bag is a rare sight.

shruikan2553

up for anything wrote: »

Nobody eats Irish salad anymore.

Recipe:

3 leaves of Butterleaf lettuce
half a tomato
a scallion
slice of ham or luncheon
half a hard boiled egg
a dollop of Heinz vegetable salad
a dollop of Heinz salad cream

Method:

Arrange lettuce leaves neatly to one half of the plate. Spoon tinned vegetable salad artfully on one corner of lettuce leaf. Roll up ham slice and place opposite lettuce and surround it with tomato, egg, scallion. If you've been abroad cover egg in salad cream.

Serve with brown bread and/or white sliced pan.

Don't ask for seconds.

....gran?

elfy4eva

It used to be customary for every tree in Ireland to have a plastic bag hanging from its branches. Trees still have cans, plastic bottles and sweet wrappers lodged in their branches but a white plastic bag is a rare sight.

Still get the odd one, but thank jeasus for the re-usable bag trend. There was nothing more unsightly. Litter was seriously bad when I was growing up. Doesn't seem to be as bad these days.

Collie D

Dublin Buses were either green or orange and you paid a conductor.

Holyhead and Liverpool were shopping Meccas rather than grim port towns across the Irish Sea - more so in Holyhead's case.

jimmytwotimes 2013

when auto-reverse twin tape decks were the mutt's nuts cutting edge technology.

listening to high-speed dubbing as it was actually funny while you copied your rich buddy's original Michael Jackson cassette

DJs annoying you by talking over the end of the song you were taping, as you'd have to wait to hear it again and get it without some DJ ruining it

codes for videoplus not really working, it was a first stab at series' link!

the purple tin

Before mobile phones if you got drunk and lost your friends on a night out you had to wander around like an eejit trying to find them.
Also there's a much greater chance of you being filmed while drunk and making a fool of yourself, that used to only happen in wedding videos.

Caliden

Those parking tickets you could buy in shops where you scratch off the date and time and leave it on your dash. Dead feckin handy because now you're screwed if you haven't got change for the parking machine!

jimmytwotimes 2013

Caliden wrote: »

Those parking tickets you could buy in shops where you scratch off the date and time and leave it on your dash. Dead feckin handy because now you're screwed if you haven't got change for the parking machine!

scratching the numbers! very fancy, or the ones which came befre them, where you'd use your car-key to punch a hole in the numbers you wanted

Crooked Jack

Caliden wrote: »

Those parking tickets you could buy in shops where you scratch off the date and time and leave it on your dash. Dead feckin handy because now you're screwed if you haven't got change for the parking machine!

they still have those in cork

Ush1

You rarely got a trip "into town".

You didn't have to dash for the off license before they closed at 10.

Health and fitness were not very popular topics.

Sweets were more sour, to the point of making my tongue bleed once.

When buying jellies, the oul wans in the shop didn't use gloves and had hands covered in sovereigns to scoop up the jellies.

Eight year old kids could buy smokes and lighters.

Ben D Bus

Ush1 wrote: »

Eight year old kids could buy smokes and lighters.

"One Major and a match please". And the shop had chairs so we could hang out there for our smoke. I remember it well.

Quin_Dub

Things I miss from the '80's

Sizzler Runners from Dunnes (Adidas ROM if you were minted!)
Electric Milk Floats
Playing Squares and Kerb-ball - never see that today....

and a few special ones for Northside Dubs

Cecil the DJ in the Grove
The Lark in the Park in St Annes
How we all thought Artane Castle was "classy" when it 1st opened..
Stopping off in Terry's on the Clontarf road for a '99 in the summer

ArnoldJRimmer

Collecting football stickers. Packet of them was around 12p. I remember having the Panini 1985 album, and the Kenny Daglish sticker was like gold dust.

Smuggling groceries from the north. Although the one bored customs officer used to just wave us on 90% of the time

Eating out was an extreme rarity, usually in the same hotel, and the only meal that was served was turkey and ham with spuds and brussel sprouts

chocksaway

A glass of orange juice was a starter on the menu if you went out for dinner

Cee-Jay-Cee

Children dont play outdoors as much as we did in our day.

Children are more restricted in what they do, where they go etc etc

Health & Safety has become a uncontrollable monster as has political correctness.

rainbowdrop

Thanks to the NCT, cars now are in a lot better condition.

I remember coming home on holidays from England, and the rust was so bad, you could see the road beneath the car when me and 6 of my cousins were being driven along by my Dad or Uncle (a la fred flinstone's car:D) Also seem to recall the driver's door being held on with wire! 6 or 7 kids in the back seat of a falling apart Opel Kadett without a seat belt between them was probably a common sight in Ireland in the 80s.

We'd be taken off to the pub, where the adults (including the driver) would drink 3 or 4 pints each, and a 2 litre bottle of TK red lemonade to share and a bag of tayto's each for all us kids!

You wouldn't get that type of Sunday Afternoon entertainment nowadays:(

Voltex

Buying bags of fruit and nuts from the stalls in front of Dublin Zoo and feeding every animal in the place.

The Ilac centre was actually a nice place to be..glass lifts were amazing.

Matchbox cars came in a cardboard box.

Bosco was the best entertainment on TV.

Fortycoats

Patschat...I don't know why people go on about Wonderly wagon..I don't remember a bit of it!

No Boards.ie
No Rollercoaster.ie where all of my family planning is discussed!!
No facebook.

Menas

Ah, 1983. MTUSA presented by Vincent Hanley was on tv then.

rainbowtrout

keeponhurling wrote: »

Indeed, this is noticeable.
Why the hell is this though? People should be more aware of what food is good/bad for you.
There is still the same levels of sport, even more choice if anything.
There are now gyms.
The pubs are quieter.
There are more slimmer foreign nationals who we can learn from.

People drive everywhere. Hardly any kids walk to school where I live and at least half live within a mile of the place.

More snacking, more convenience food. 30 years ago many people were still on a meat and potatoes style diet, nothing fancy.

rainbowtrout

PhlegmyMoses wrote: »

Just on Wibbs's point about the women being no bigger than a size 14, the women have gotten better looking\take care of their appearance more nowadays. Everyone remember the class pictures of the 70s and 80s of the girls with the massive glasses, Mary Robinson hair-dos and milk bottle legs on the walls of your old school or pics of your parents and their mates when they were young 'uns? You could hardly spot a looker. Now they're all GHD'd, San Tropez'd, Brazilian'd and Mac'd up (you may tell at this point that I'm in deeper waters than I can handle when it comes to women's grooming products). Probably the extra cash in the country and the accessibility of the requisite products have caused this.

It's even more recent than that. Found school tour photos from 1995 recently when I was 16 and the girls are wearing tracksuit bottoms, check shirts, denim shirts, no make up. No branded clothing or footwear. Most of it was probably from Penneys or Dunnes.


Cinema: Films came out in Ireland/Europe about 6 months after they did in America, and you just had to wait. No multiscreen cinemas, so the same one or two films could be showing for weeks.

At school you could figure out who had 'the channels' and who had RTE 1 and 2 based on what they watched. People in large towns/cities had access to cable. Rural based people only had the Irish channels.

No instant gratification, if you wanted a ticket to a concert you queued up (possibly all night) outside the local record shop for it, and had a bit of craic with the other people in the queue.

Far less exotic foods available in supermarkets. Seasonal fruit was just that. I remember always being excited in summer when strawberries would be on sale, often from street vendors/market. It was a massive treat for me. Now I can get them any day of the week. Now that I think about it, vegetables, fruits etc were sold as seen, none of this 'it's the wrong shape shite so consumers won't buy it' which means so much food never gets to the shops. Since when did shoppers say they wouldn't buy carrots and parsnips because they were a little crooked? Potatoes were not washed, spent many an evening scrubbing the mud off potatoes in the sink which had come out of a four stone bag.

Ben D Bus

All rubbish went into the same bin.

Ush1

Parents could bate the sh*te out of their kids in public and nobody batted an eyelid.

WanabeOlympian

Crooked Jack wrote: »

Im 27 and unless I had jsut done something physically demanding, gone out for a run or been working on the farm all day, i would only shower once or twice a week. I really don't understand these anal freaks who feel the need to shower once or twice a day

I really hope you are joking. That's pretty disgusting. At least shower once a day, if not for you for the sake of others. Take pride in your personal hygiene and grooming. It's a sure sign to people of high value/self esteem and an essential for first impressions. Hope your dental hygiene is up to scratch too, floss + brush + mouth wash X minimum twice a day. If not your breath also smells. Yikes :eek:

ruthloss

Crooked Jack wrote: »

Im 27 and unless I had jsut done something physically demanding, gone out for a run or been working on the farm all day, i would only shower once or twice a week. I really don't understand these anal freaks who feel the need to shower once or twice a day

Is it a Butterfly Farm you have Crooked Jack?;)

the purple tin

PhlegmyMoses wrote: »

Just on Wibbs's point about the women being no bigger than a size 14, the women have gotten better looking\take care of their appearance more nowadays. Everyone remember the class pictures of the 70s and 80s of the girls with the massive glasses, Mary Robinson hair-dos and milk bottle legs on the walls of your old school or pics of your parents and their mates when they were young 'uns? You could hardly spot a looker. Now they're all GHD'd, San Tropez'd, Brazilian'd and Mac'd up (you may tell at this point that I'm in deeper waters than I can handle when it comes to women's grooming products). Probably the extra cash in the country and the accessibility of the requisite products have caused this.

With the identikit style nowadays- blonde dye job, Oompa Loompa fake tan, drawn on eyebrows and harsh makeup I wonder is it an improvement at all?
More women take an interest in topiary nowadays (nudge, nudge) in fact it was probably extremely rare in old Ireland.
No national anthem in nightclubs anymore, loads of drunks swaying unsteadily on their feet and singing/mumbling incoherently so people think they know the words

NickDunne

krudler wrote: »

do you EVER see a brown car anymore?

Saw one of these yesterday :eek:

http://autocarinterior.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2013-Ford-Fiesta-Side-Brown-View.jpg

Tabnabs

The old 'children didn't play as much indoors' is bollox.

In the 80s we played indoors the majority of the time. Action man, transformers, action force, Scalextric, soldiers, lego, we had loads of options. A group of boys sitting around playing with toys has been replaced with a group of boys sitting around with console controllers in their hands, that's all. This is Ireland, it rained most of the time!

When we did go outside, we usually went far and wide to explore, unsupervised (not something kids are allowed at all today).

In the 80s going down the country meant every fecking small town in Ireland got a look in. Japanese cars were the most unreliable as they rusted (or at least had that reputation). Wintersports were unheard of. My old man appeared in a photo in the Irish Press for skiing in a field near the Dublin mountains.

The DART was like a whole new mode of transport when that started up and taking a trip out to Howth was a real adventure.

Divorce was illegal, but families still lived separately from their fathers.

Travel to England was by ferry and the adults always stocked up on Duty Free. With emigration, the term cattle ship, was still stuck in everyone's minds.

Gay Byrne was every house wives favourite and we believed he reflected the moral attitudes of the Irish as a people.

My father is a foreign national who moved to Ireland in the 60s from another European country (and had to sign on at the local garda station regularly to prove residence/whereabouts), he works in the field of electronics and communications and is adamant to this day that our phone was tapped right up to the late 80s.

BraziliaNZ

Supercans

up for anything

Voltex wrote: »

Fortycoats

Patschat...I don't know why people go on about Wonderly wagon..I don't remember a bit of it!

Fortycoats was a character in Wanderly Wagon. I don't remember a separate programme with him in it (but I was most likely an adult by then and gone to England in search of work) but it must have been a spin off.

Klim

When you were on the road and another car was driving slow/fast erratically, you laughed and said 'he must be plastered' and tried your best to avoid him.

Thankfully that attitude has changed.

Faith+1

NickDunne wrote: »

Saw one of these yesterday :eek:

http://autocarinterior.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2013-Ford-Fiesta-Side-Brown-View.jpg

It's not that bad! I think the poster meant the old dull matt brown.

Voltex

up for anything wrote: »

Fortycoats was a character in Wanderly Wagon. I don't remember a separate programme with him in it (but I was most likely an adult by then and gone to England in search of work) but it must have been a spin off.

Tomohawk

I remember in the 80s Dunne's and Quinsworth had free trolleys that people used to take their weekly shopping up the road (most people did a weekly shop back then) and sometimes all the way home with them, where the young lads employed by the supermarkets had to do trolley runs every night to get them back.

Said lads had to wear brown shop coats and a shirt and tie to sweep the aisles in the supermarket and no earrings were allowed! Today staff wear polo shirts.

Public phone boxes were a common sight still in the 1980s. Then came snazzy card public phones in the 90s.

Some record shops had record clubs where you as a member could "rent" an vinyl album for a night for a quid and return it next day after taping it. Home taping is killing music indeed!

Video game machines cost 10p in video arcades, great place to hang out as a moody teenager. These type of video arcade are long gone now. Some hotels had the posh version, tabletop video game machines.

People wrote postcards when on holiday.

People wrote letters for just about everything.

Many pubs particularly suburban ones had youngsters working as lounge staff. Pub owners actually still worked in many pubs and had one or 2 senior barman who was really senior in years. Today most staff are under 40.

worded

oldyouth wrote: »

You bought a car, you bought a licence, you bought insurance and loaded the thing up with your mates and headed out on the road.

Ah yes the cartys. The sessions in the country with your chrome tapes with good tunes and good friends

Galwayguy35

Walking to school, kids these days need to be motored everywhere.

Tomohawk

There was soap opera on the main radio station eeryday at lunchtime, Harbour Hotel!

CB Radio was a big "craze" in the early 80s, as were skateboards, hula hoops, and rubick cubes. I don't think crazes sweep the nations kids any more now that everything is utterly instant and online...

Femme_Fatale

Those public safety ads on TV - there were loads of them and they were so scary!

Shopping centre muzak - bland jazz-funk instrumentals or instrumental covers of Michael Jackson/Earth Wind & Fire/Randy Crawford ballads. Still a lot better than the stuff that gets played today though.

blow69

It must have been incredibly difficult back in the day to get around, arrange/cancel appointments without mobile phones.


Example: If you planned to meet up with a friend outside the GPO at such and such a time and something came up forcing you to cancel. You would have no choice but to leave your friend hanging around like a lemon.

Probably the only thing that has maybe dis-improved is the build quality of houses unless you pay extra. Although architecture has improved greatly with buildings that will still hold up in 20/30 years time. Same can't be said for 70s/80s architecture today.

rainbowtrout

blow69 wrote: »

It must have been incredibly difficult back in the day to get around, arrange/cancel appointments without mobile phones.


Example: If you planned to meet up with a friend outside the GPO at such and such a time and something came up forcing you to cancel. You would have no choice but to leave your friend hanging around like a lemon.

To be honest, no it wasn't. If you had arranged to meet someone you bloody well turned up. There was no flakiness of getting the text 10 minutes after you were supposed to meet saying 'sorry won't make it' when they've known they can't be arsed for the previous 45 minutes. People weren't in contact as much so I guess people followed through on plans rather than just dropping them at the last minute because they got a text from someone with a better offer.

Anyone who grew up in Limerick and socialised there will have spent time standing outside Brown Thomas/Todds on a Saturday night to meet people. There was always a line of people there waiting for friends.


Actually myself and my friends when we were teenagers booked coaches to go to gigs many times in the mid 90s long before mobile phones and it would go something like this. There would be 7 or 8 of us, and each of those friends would have 2 or 3 more friends who were going to the same gig and would book a space with us and so on. And the list would grow until we had filled the bus. All by word of mouth. They would be told the cost of the bus, the location and time it would be leaving. Everyone always turned up on the morning looking for the girl who was friends with their boyfriends friend etc, and handed the money over. No mobile phones, no Facebook group invites. You couldn't do that now, most people wouldn't give you a straight answer and plenty would send you a text on the morning (probably late) say 'I'm not going, chat to you again' without hint of explanation or apology.

ElWalrus

TV Habits.

One TV in the house, and all the family would hang out in the one room, with it being confiscated when the late late show would come on on Fridays.

Having to watch your favorite program at the time the TV channel allocated.

Oh, and watching a lot more late night channel 4 back in the day! :pac:

Stojkovic

blow69 wrote: »

It must have been incredibly difficult back in the day to get around, arrange/cancel appointments without mobile phones.

Young people nowadays probably dont know how to use a landline or would be too lazy to go to the hall/kitchen to even make the call.

Agree with other poster, if you arranged to meet friends - you met them.

feargale

kfallon wrote: »

Also, the currency

The stupid buggers could have put the designs of our beautiful old currency on our euro coins, but some eejit thought fish, fowl and four-leggeds wouldn't make us look important enough. Ah for the humility of the Celtic Tiger!

the purple tin

A man pushing a pram or doing the shopping was a lot rarer in the old days (not macho). A father staying at home with the children while the woman worked too. I think a woman had to stop working when she got married up until the 70's or 80's.

Thankfully all the bull**** stigma of unmarried and single mothers has gone out the window as well (still some people clinging to that mindset though).

ArnoldJRimmer

the purple tin wrote: »

A man pushing a pram or doing the shopping was a lot rarer in the old days (not macho). A father staying at home with the children while the woman worked too. I think a woman had to stop working when she got married up until the 70's or 80's.

Thankfully all the bull**** stigma of unmarried and single mothers has gone out the window as well (still some people clinging to that mindset though).

A woman had to give up work when she got married up until we joined the EEC, so early 70's.

losthorizon

OneArt wrote: »

I don't understand how some people can get out of bed and get dressed straight away. I always feel grimy and disgusting when I wake up, have to shower at least once a day.

I shower the night before. :pac: