Hello...
Welcome to the first in an irregular series in which I, your splenetic and bilesome narrator, attempt to hook, land and gut the most nauseating memes that float past my beady eye...
First up... Those 'wasn't the time of MY childhood great' messages that Facebook vomits periodically into my timeline once or twice a week...
They are usually put there by people who haven't bothered reading them to the end... I don't blame them... Aside from a sentimentality that is so cloying that even a scouse Peter Kay fan might regard them as a 'bit too Mawkish', they then throw in a weird 'Daily Mail' style 'Cor Blimey that safety thing is a bit Silly isn't it?' attitude to further lose any touch with reality..
If you're on a social network, you will have seen a variation of this meme. They usually turn up with half a million 'likes' and a closing line that says something like:
'Share if you drank from the garden Hose and survived'
'Hit like if you went hungry for refusing your Mom's food'
'Hit like and share if you think that progress and increased wellbeing is shit and you would actually rather time go backwards to a fantasy, 'Lord of the Rings' when you could juggle chainsaws on a bike without a helmet down an unlit road with no phone or medicine without the PC brigade jumping on your back'*
(*well... that's the Subtext anyway)
That in mind I wrote this and sent it into the world...
"My Curfew was when it got dark, even though I had no idea what the word 'Curfew' meant and the fact that 'When it gets Dark' changes year round, meaning it was often grossly unfair and arbitrary.
When it was time to come in I had to go immediately and if it was late I would worry my Mum, because there was no easily obtainable, portable, communication device that could have allayed her fears... and when we were chased by what used to be called a 'stranger' (statistically, a more common occurrence then than today) there was no way to get help other than screaming for it through a haze of tears and snot.
Infant mortality, abductions and violent crime were higher, but there was no liquid soap.. so that was better... right?
Oh and although you could get your mouth washed out with soap for being 'cheeky', you probably wouldn't for being Racist, Sexist or Homophobic, because that was the staple of 'Entertainment' shows and was thus Okey-Dokey-Fine.
Yes, I rode a bike without a helmet, and the two times I crashed it it was dumb, blind luck that saved me from death and not well-made safety equipment.
Getting Dirty was ok, but due to the less advanced washing machines/detergents of the time, getting your clothes dirty was not... oh and incidents of filicide through 'Zealous Discipline' were also far far more common...
Click Like if You too have a deluded and vaguely sinister attachment to a period in history, insisting it is somehow 'better' just because it was when you were young!"
I'm guessing my half a million likes and shares are stuck in an internet pipe somewhere. I can wait...
Do I have a point or am I just being a sarky clever clogs?
Well...a little from column A, little from Column B...
I am a sarky clever clogs, but my point is... Things are getting better, both in this country and across the globe. Crime is going down, diseases have better survival rates, base level of poverty is nowhere near the level of even twenty years ago... that isn't to say there isn't more to be done, just that you can only do that by looking forward... the good things in the past are already being built on, that is what progress is....
Part of that progress is an increased awareness of the need for Safety controls for workers... Now, many will confuse this with spurious liitigation by ambulance chasing lawyers... but, like the much maligned 'Political Correctness' it is a neccesary framework to establish, even if (like any framework ever) it is sometimes used by unscrupulous dipshits for their own ends, unaware that they are ruining everything for everyone.
To summarise there was never an EU law stating you have to wear goggles to play conkers, just as nobody ever banned Christmas... but there were three maintanance men slowly roasted to death in a belt fed bread oven (over the course of an hour long cycle) after the correct procedures were not followed in order 'to save Time'...
I remember my childhood... it was bloody ace...
And the past in general... fantastic...
But, If you don't think you are living in the best of all possible times, (excepting that which comes after), you are either: not looking at the evidence or allowing a nostalgia for your own youth to utterly cloud your judgement...
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