I cant drive, but buses for short distances are just a joke in price. I can get an all day ticket for £5.50 and go all over Teeside, an explorer is something like £8.40 and can go all over the NE with it, but if i want to go from my house, to 3 stops to get down the center of Guisborough, its £1.40, its a 15 minute walk, its no wonder ppl take the car for short distances, and lets be honest, the bus isnt the fastest or most comfortable form of transport, when i used to live in Blyth and travel down here, it would take 3 hours on the bus, in a car it would take an hour max. I can see why people hate buses/public transport, and wish I didnt have to use it
Since I lost my licence due to epilepsy I've enjoyed using the buses at times, hardly used the car anyhow so don't really miss it.
Aye, i'm an old man in a 20 something body, still manage to make it to about 2am when i go out though, in the cardigan and slippers.
I have family in the USA, my dad went over there and they asked "do you want to go round the block" (see the neighbourhood etc) - my dad went to get his coat and they looked at him as though he was crazy. Turns out they meant to go round the block by car, a entire 2 minute drive.
I stayed with people in Canada a couple of times - in a fairly big city. They never walked anywhere - even drove down the road to pick up their post from the mailboxes. I guess that's why they call the road "pavement".
Must admit i hardly walk anywhere... For one it's to damn hot.....then there is speed bumps everywhere (dogs).
Bloody hell shameless. 1/ The only eggs we usually found were Starlings and Spuggies. (Trust me they survived.) 2/ Which was changed with improvement in scientific knowledge. (Lets not get into manure poisoning of waterways.) 3/ Wealth is still based on the exploitation of other countries and our own people. 4/ Again sorted with medical advancement, may as well have added the Black Death. We do have that nice new disease AIDS for future historians to call us on, along with lots of others. 5/ And this has actually changed? 6/ They hadn't invented solar cells then! The olden days may have not been a green paradise! But our plastic throw away society is much worse for waste now! And the waste is hard to get rid of.
Paper carrier bags. Bio-degradable, unlike plastic. Fish and Chips wrapped in newspapers. Milk bottle tops collected for Blue Peter. Making Xmas decorations from scraps of paper. Bacon and Ham sliced freshly in the shop on the counter, by a hand driven slicer. Not Wrapped in more plastic. Sweets weighed and put in a wrap of paper straight from the jar. Numerous foods etc. supplied in re-useable tins. Ones that spring to mind are..... Coleman's Mustard Oxo Cigarette and pipe tobacco
Back in 1968 when we moved house we had to fill a galvanised water tank, heat it up and cart about 12 buckets of hot water upstairs for a bath!, 'bank' the coal fire up at night (or you had to chop sticks, use old newspaper etc then coal on top and use a 'bleazer' in the cold mornings, the kids won't know what that is !, and you could get rid of your rubbish on the fire.
A blazer???? My old man used to make me kneel there with a sheet of newspaper over the fire opening to get the updraft. He did give me good advice mind, if it catches afire shove it in the fireplace. 5 Years old and I never forgot that rule.
I can remember the tin bath when I was a kid. The only hot water in our house came from a cylindrical electric heater in the tiny kitchen we had & the bath had to be filled from that. My granny had an open range in the living room. All cast iron with a coal fire & an oven next to it that the fire heated. Happy days though we never wanted for owt.
probably because there wasnt anything you actually wanted, not like these days with TVs/consoles/handhelds/mobiles/brand name trainers etc etc Its like when I used to work for the council collecting rent, the old folk used to always say "in our day you could leave your door open and no one would steal anything" I always thought, "because you had nowt worth stealing" lol which is probably true back then.
Going back to the original post, I think that there are arguments to support both sides of the divide here...Yes, the average man/woman/child/ consumed far less energy in the past than today, however, energy production was far dirtier than in the past... In my opinion there is only two ways we can prevent the global catastrophe's that will undoubtedly occur if we carry on producing global warming gasses at our present rate...Firstly, the world has got to get away from relying on fossil fuel energy and convert to for example solar, wind and in the short term nuclear energy. Secondly, and in my opinion most importantly, the world's population needs to be reduced, and to achieve this we need to educate certain cultures on the merits of birth control and also change the breed at all costs attitude that certain religions preach to their followers..
I've never been materialistic mate, not ever. I grew up learning to repair things. We never threw owt out unless it was ****ed. I'm still like that now, always took care of what I did have. I have a lathe in my garage that was made in 1946 & I couldn't buy one today with the build quality, features it has for owt less than 5 grand. Cost me £400.
The population growth is just as much, people living longer than 40-80 years ago, than it is ppl having big families, a lot of British families had 11-12 kids in the 40`s-60`s, now thats dropped drastically (you still get the odd 1 or 2) but we still have 10 million + more people living in the UK than back then. As for power, well we are going to have to do something, oil wont last forever, I dont think Wind is the answer, OK for smaller towns, but big cities have no chance, there is a type of algea that i seen on the TV that can produce lots of power (this was about 5 years ago though so memory is hazy) so that may be the way to go in the future. http://inhabitat.com/power-your-car-with-algae-algae-biocrude-by-livefuels/