Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Cyclist assaulted
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
.......
In the 1950s, butchers, bakers, greengrocers and newsagents all delivered. You could order over the phone, or you could wander down the street and choose your goods and have the van bring them to the house.
A more civilised time, mind; it was the norm then for everyone in the family to come home for lunch, aka 'dinner', and then go back to school or work. And there was little of the insanity of working long hours of overtime, unless you were in a factory that had a big order on, and then the work was paid at a higher rate.
.......
As long as you discount the industrial schools, TB, emigration, record low population levels, grinding poverty, church dominated healthcare and education systems, the lack of infrastructure (such as electricity beyond the cities and towns) and the lack of free schooling......it was a grand time.
And work wasn't paid at a higher rate. The reason cycling rates were so high in the 1950s was because people couldn't afford cars - they weren't cycling because it was a lifestyle choice, they were cycling because most could only afford bikes for day-to-day transport.
From what I know of the period, I'd prefer now - we've never been healthier, wealthier or safer - whether on or off the bike
0 -
-
All very true. Though not about the bicycles; cars were simply not generally seen as a way to go to work. Living in Dalkey, virtually all the local civil servants, etc, took the Number 8 into town to work. Businesspeople were more likely to drive, but they were the exception. The GPO had a gigantic cycle park in the centre of the building and most people who worked there — the civil servants running the postal service — cycled in, including a succession of Secretaries of the Department, until the 1990s at least.
But the good parts of that lifestyle are still in operation in many countries: if you move to France or Spain you're still likely to find people living that way.
The industrial schools, the TB, the emigration: these came from an arch-Catholic rule that we still haven't shaken off.
Really, that's your metric - Dalkey? How much the population of the country live there - 1%?
I think you'll find TB was down to the cramped and over-crowded living conditions, poor standard of housing and lack of sanitation capacity. And whether they came about by the hand of the state, the church or a combination of both is immaterial - the fact is in 1950s TB was a problem, it isn't now, thankfully (or at least not nearly on the same scale)
And yes, I don't doubt that a middle-class lifestyle centred on Dalkey and taking the tram to work was a fine existence at the time (Hugh Leonard's writings tell us as much, but even he needed a scholarship to go to Pres) but I'd rather fancy that the experience of a tenement dweller in Sean McDermott Street or Henrietta Street wasn't as nice. Or a farm labourer.
And as for France and Spain - that lifestyle is made possible by generous welfare entitlements from the state - it wasn't always thus. I'd imagine if you were a nationalist family in Franco's Spain in the 1950s your prospects and lifestyle were somewhat better that if you were associated with the republicans Likewise if you were in rural France 10 years after the war and were not a Gaullist, I doubt you had much fun. 0 -
-
Jawgap, Dalkey isn't my metric, it's my childhood experience. But the same was true in most places (by "the same" I'm talking about people using buses and bikes to get to work).
No, actually it isn't. Most the country doesn't/didn't live in Dalkey and I can pretty much guarantee you that the experience of farm labourer, a shop worker, a docker, a bank clerk and an unemployed person in 1950s Ireland was not just a world apart from the experience of living in Dalkey but a whole galaxy apart. Even the legendary philanthropy bestowed on Guinness workers pales in comparison to what the modern welfare state (such as it is even in Ireland) bestows on it's citizens.The Church and the State were then hand-in-hand. TB was certainly caused by the State, which — fomented by the Catholic Church — fought tooth-and-nail against vaccination for TB for many years. The Church and the State were hand-in-hand in running the industrial schools and laundries, and in sending poor children 'found begging' to be incarcerated there through the courts.
Again, regardless of who 'caused' it, exacerbated it, or failed to implement an effective immunisation programme, the fact remains TB was rampant in 1950s Ireland (Dalkey excluded) thus undermining the idea that it was a 'more civilised time' - as you stated earlier.
And while we're wandering off the the cycling topic - this 'civilised time' also pretty much excluded married women from the workforce. I'm sure women would just love to go back to a 'civilised time' when marriage meant the end of a career, but they could pledge their husband's creditWe are so used to Ireland that we forget that what would in other countries be seen as a centre-right party is here perceived as centrist; what would in other countries be seen as a centre-left party is seen here as far left. Apart from the righist ex-communist countries that Britain ladled into the European Union, swinging the EU to the right, our country is now probably one of the furthest to the right in the EU.
You mistake me, my dear. I'm not saying the 1950s were a delightful time. I'm saying that by correctly throwing the filthy cruel practices of those times out, we have also thrown out some good things — being able to shop locally, a cycling and public transport centred society, more sensible work hours.
No, you are not saying they were 'delightful' you are saying they were 'more civilised' - I live in a semi-rural location, I can still shop locally (and do, especially in my LBS) - public transport is a joke (not everyone can live on the DART or old Harcourt Street Line) as it always has been outside the cities, even in the more civilised times.
And we haven't thrown anything out - if a business fails to adapt, then thanks to our financial liberation the market punishes it. People now have choices they didn't in the more civilised 1950s - we're not shackled to the local economy bound to take only what we can reach on a bike or by bus.
The shops in the village near where I live have adapted - we've even seen a few added over the years (including a Tesco, which actually didn't put the local butchers out of business it allowed him to expand, and a dressmakers, a pharmacy, a dentists surgery and an art/crafts shop).
As I said, we've never been healthier, wealthier or safer.0 -
-
Advertisement
-
Advertisement