How green WAS my valley?

[Terence Lynock]

Thay say a plastic bottle is safer than a glass bottle, OK but you can still buy milk in glass bottles, beer in glass bottles and fizzy pop in glass bottles so if they are safer and it is to the common good to use plastic bottles why havnt they passed a law to do away with them?.

You see far more plastic bottles littering our streets than you ever did glass ones, to smash a glass bottle on the footpath was a definite no-no and would get you in all sorts of bother but kids these days dump plastics all over the place, play football with them and the latest craze of screwing the top down tight and throwing it into the road for a car to run over causing a very loud bang couldnt be done with a glass bottle,

People are more inclined to recycle glass than they are plastic because mental conditioning says plastic is worthless so not worth the bother. Glass bottles have been around since Roman times so lets stick with the devil we know, Finally bury a glass bottle and it will still be there in a thousand years time, bury a plastic bottle and it will slowly decay releasing all sorts of toxins into the soil.

[andy watson]

Posted by Terence Lynock on 21/05/2011 21:04:03:

How Wasteful the Older Generation Was .... In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.” The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. The former generation did not care enough to save our environment." He was right, that generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, they returned their milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But which generation stopped sending them back and went to Tesco instead? In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two streets. But which generation installed all the escalators and bought all the cars? Back then, they washed the baby’s nappies because they didn’t have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 3 Kilowatts– wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But which generation threw away Terry nappies and moved to disposables- whilst importing their shirts from Bangladesh to save a few quid? Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a hankerchief, not a screen the size of a football pitch. In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn’t have electric machines to do everything for you. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, they didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But which generation put the mower in the back of the shed and bought a flymow? They drank from a tap when they were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. Which generation introduced mass bottled water? And biros? And disposable razors?     Back then, people took the train or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. Which generation decided all these gizmos were essential?

Sorry, but this post is a sanctimoneous piece of revisionist bunkum. Blame the kids for the problems of the day that have been building up over years! I remember just about everything in the list as a child/teenager growing up in the 70s and 80s- coincidently when (almost) all these things stopped. Pretty much everything on the list was dead and buried (or seriously on it's last legs) by about 1980. That means anyone under 30 never saw any of it.

 

BUT, and here's the rub, it's not the 30 year olds that killed off all these examples. The people that decided bottled water was better than tap, or that could aford to buy all those new cars, or electrical gizmos were the people that were economically active in 1980. Generally speaking you are looking at people aged 25-40...ish. A bit of basic arithmitic tells us that the people that killed off all these wondously virtuous habits are now 55-70 ish. I wonder how that compares with the age of the respondants praising the OP?

[Terence Lynock]

A good example of screwed up thinking was on Top Gear tonight, we all remember the 'diesel is best' campaign to get us all driving diesel cars because diesel was cheaper and gave better miles per gallon.

So what the hell use is a 5.4 V12 twin turbo diesel engined 4x4? naturally it is BMW and aimed at the afluent young yuppy gentlemen of today, and I bet you a hundred quid it was designed by a member of the younger generation, why? because the older generations are more economy conscious.

[Peter Miller]

Yes, Look at the age of the average 4X4 driver, You Can hardly move round our local primary school as the young mothers deliver and collect their offspring and their 4X4s and most of them live a few hundred yards away in the local estate.

 

Then we have the hypocrites who keep insisting that we use our cars less and burn less fuel and reducing carbon emissions. Then they happily jet off to Spain etc for their holidays.

 

The average jet engine burns 700 gallons and hour. The average aircraft has two of them. Not burning the fuel in a clean engine with a catalytic converter but on an open fire.

 

I believe the average flight to Spain from start up to shut down is up to 2 hours. Then there is the return trip. Say 5600 gallons.

 

Every family on that flight could drive down to the Costa del Sol and use far less fuel.

[john haz]

Brilliant post & so much of it is true. I am 50, so have some fun memories the late 60's through to 81 when i turned into a responsible adult LOL

 

As for the post above this (Terence) ........ 5.4 ltr V12 TT Diesel ....... I keep looking but can't see the problem I'm no BMW fan but that WOULD be on my shopping list if I could afford it !

[Tim Kearsley]

To Alan C:

 

I'm almost the same age as you Alan and, while I don't remember mint Maltesers myself, if you do a quick Google you'll find a few recollections from others who DO remember them, around 1963/64 - about the time you refer to.

 

Tim.

[Snorbitz]

I can't help but get an overwhelming wiff of Twiglets and Steradent from this thread so far. I kind of side with Andy Watson on this one. Yes some things were great years ago but they maybe only seemed great because there was no alternative and folk didn't know any better at the time. I'll just use mobile phones as an obvious one. What would the adults of the 40/50/60s have given for an electronic gizmo (ie, the thing you're currently looking at) to vent their views on?. I wonder. I think its called evolution of the species. Sadly looking at some of the low life's and drop outs around the town center at the weekend i sometimes wonder if Darwin's theory of natural selection may have gone astray somewhere. At least the world didn't end on Saturday eh. Cheers God.

[Tony Bennett]

anyone seen the film idiotcracy..

 

sums up whats happening exactly.

 

the smart ones keep putting off having children until they are ready.

the dumb ones just have kids willy nilly, as a result the average iq drops through the floor and the world goes into decline. as each generation gets dumber and dumber.

[Erfolg]

Terence is absolutely right on the money, with respects to many aspects of life.

 

But Ken also has a point, that for ordinary working families, life was hard.

 

The down side of today, is our own generation, not just the young having a distorted view of safety, risk, taking no account of benefits. So we now have stupid rules being imposed by every "tin pot" dictator. There is more than a little of this in our hobby. We also have the new religion of political correctness, where the values and ethics of past generations are dismissed as prejudiced, ill informed. But I guess all generations do the same. That together with the religion of "Global Warming", used to justify the most ludicrous of behaviors, are the downsides of society today.

 

Yep being green is not new, or was it in the past that society and industry recycled where it was economically viable and it made sense.

[Terence Lynock]

I doubt I will still be around to see it but sooner or later we will have to face the hard fact that we will have to consider what we need as against what we want, oil supplies will not laqst for ever and as the stuff becomes more and more hard to come by the price will go up.

Only the rich will be able to run a car, either that or the governments of this world will ration supplies generating a black market as during the Suez crisis back in 1956, petrolium products are being burnt like there is an infinite supply but the human race is in for a surprise the supply starts to dry up.

It isnt just petrol we will lose, many plastics have their origins in crude oil, medicines likewise, synthetic rubber used for aircraft engine seals and gaskets and so on, we only think of car fuel when we hear that the price of crude has gone up but petrol and diesel is only a very small part of that barrel of oil.

[Tony Bennett]

apparently America has stacks of oil left in the ground but is using every one else's up first.

[Terence Lynock]

Yep being green is not new, or was it in the past that society and industry recycled where it was economically viable and it made sense.

 

 

I think in the past recycling was done to save money pure and simple, during the war it was done because of short supply, both reasons viable and understandable but do neither and you just finished up out of pocket or short of material.

Today its a totally different ball game, do nothing and we end up with a poluted, trash filled world short of all the things that makes life bearable, no car fuel, no gas, no electricity, no synthetic materials, taken to the extreme will will have 'bombed' ourselves back into something akin to the stone age.

Edited By Terence Lynock on 23/05/2011 16:20:11

[Ian Jones]

Posted by Alan C on 22/05/2011 10:23:20:

talking to the nurse at our practise, when she was doing her dracula act on me, she came out with a profound statement, she reckons the health service is going to be inundated with heart and obesity problems, when todays 10-15 yr olds reach their 50s, they dont play, they dont excersise, its the way societys going, scary, eh?

 

now then, A QUESTION, i am 57 now, when i was at pri mary school, about, 8 yr old maybe?? i remember maltesers bringing out a mint version, mintesers yet no one, not even the makers, can recollect them, i loved them, but they dissapeared soon after, does ANYONE remember them?????????

 

Edited By Alan C on 22/05/2011 10:38:41

Yes I remember them, liked them too. Gave a bit of variety.

 

Crisps came in 3 varieties though: plain, plain with salt added from the little blue twisted bag & cheese & onion.

Ian

 

 

[Phil 9]

The cold war the biggest waist of the planets recourses so far. You can’t blame that on the younger generation.

[Spice Cat]

Many years ago I worked for a Land Rover dealership. The management sent a Range Rover off to a specialist firm in Andover to have a BMW turbo diesel engine fitted. When I collected said item and returned it to Edenbridge, we all stood around this behemoth asking "Who the hell will want a diesel car???" I wonder what became of it.

Times change.

Slightly off thread I know but I do remember the “good old days”. I would disappear from the house in the morning and not return until tea time. Parents didn’t seem to worry too much and I wasn’t up to no good. And yes, I did end up in A+E on a few occasions as a kid and it was all part of growing up. Nobody wrapped me in cotton wool. Anyhow, anyone know the claim to fame of Shepton Dash??

Edited By Spice Cat on 23/05/2011 22:21:53

Edited By Spice Cat on 23/05/2011 22:29:14

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Having googled it I do now!

 

I must say that Andy's points made me stop and think.  I suppose the thing is that we can now look back at the simpler times and realise that there were things to commend but of course, our generation and the previous one drove the changes through enthusiastically, not appreciating the downsides.  The modern generation can have no concept of what we experienced...

 

However, I missed out on the mint maltesers somehow!

 

But I didn't miss out on Oxo flavoured Chipmunk crisps which put blue twists of salt and even ready salted in the shade...and co-incidentally, their bags were the first heat shrink material I ever came across - play a lighter under one and it would shrink to a perfect miniature version!

 

Edited By Martin Harris on 23/05/2011 23:01:25

[Alan Cantwell]

but, in all this doom and gloom, there is, for me, good, ney, GREAT NEWS, mintesers DID exist, now, i am happy, goodnight easy pleased, arnt i?

[Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator]

That's what I like - a chap with simple needs - a man after my own heart!

 

BEB

[Myron Beaumont]

Alan C

There definitely was a mint version of Maltesers, and they were very nice. They came in a green packet and if you sucked them slowly you were left with the minty bit. I remember because every fine Sunday Dad went to his allotment and took me with him, we always called in at the newsagents for his weekly supply of pipe tobacco and he bought me a packet of sweets to keep me amused whilst he was working on the allotment.

This must have been before 1962 when we moved to the farm - I would guess late 1950s.

Brilliant thread by the way

 

Chrissy

[Myron Beaumont]

Isn't part of it to do with attitudes changing after WWII and an end to rationing and austerity?

And the changing role of women? More women than ever were working during the war - the Armed Forces, Land Army, driving ambulances, factory work etc, and playing a valuable role. And after the war they wanted to go on working. As far as I can remember - I was born in 1952 - there was a big upsurge in labour-saving devices around the home - electric mixers, fridges - people didn't have fridges, and washing machines, they had pantries and dolly tubs. There was definitely a kitchen revolution, with new gadgets available. Not necessarily a bad thing, I wouldn't swap my washer for a dolly tub.

Not making a feminist point, I just think there were social forces and changing attitudes that drove the beginnings of a consumer society. I can remember the excitement when we got our first TV, and when Dad got his first car so we could all go out which we couldn't on his motorbike. People were starting to have some spare money, and change was seen as a good thing, making life easier and more comfortable than it had been during the war years.

I agree it has got out of hand and become ridiculous, just think the ball started rolling because of social changes.

 

Chrissy

[Spice Cat]

Trouble with a rolling ball is that it oftens goes down hill....

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Myron Beaumont]

Eric

But gathers no moss!

[Terence Lynock]

Been hunting around for the best Balsa prices and the best I could do for 1.5mm sheet is twenty sheets of good quality stuff 4'' wide by 1 metre for £18.95 inc P&P.

This actually works out cheaper than I was paying two years ago for 3'' wide, I am running a bit short of sheet now but I do have the biggest scrap box in christendom.....