What states allow hunting with dogs?

[Mortblanc]

No Paul it was not the "good old days". That is just the point. Nostalgia is a poor replacement for historical fact.

Want to know why Brits shop by the day? It is because in 1960 80% of the population had no refrigerators in their homes. There was no way to keep food day to day. Old habits die hard.

Grand ma shopped every day, didn't she, and so did Mom, and it is no real problem to stop on the way home from work and pick something up. And Grand ma had all day to simmer a soup on the stove in the two up-two down flat with the toilet in the back garden. She did not put in an 8-10 hour day at work. Ready made meals are the cost of having a two income family.

Why did Brits "save up" before they made a purchase? It was because consumer credit was illegal! Most of those "dreamed of purchases never took place. You dreamed, you planned, you talked, but you did not buy. You simply did not make enough to have surplus funds for anything over survival. Another government mandate to keep spending down and money available for taxation.

People did not "save up" to buy automobiles or homes! That is an illusion. Fuel was still rationed. If you owned a car you could not get fuel for it. Homes and cars did not become purchases for the common man until rationing ended and the laws on credit changed in the late 1960s.

Most of the cleanup of war destruction was done and the new "infrastructure" of motorways plowed through the slums and tenements that had been the shame of British cities for centuries. New housing developments sold small homes to a new middle class, and provided high rise council flats to poor and working class families. It was the first time many of them had seen a toilet that was not "out back" or cooked in a full kitchen with fridge.

And waste? It was not plastic for sure! Plastic technology cost money to import. Your trash was glass bottles, tins and waxed paper and a stew of sewage pumped directly into the rivers.

Your pollution was industrial toxins pouring from untreated plant sewers going at full production with no environmental checks or health and safety laws. Here in the states we had rivers that actually caught on fire and burned uncontrollably back in "the good old days". There was hardly a fish fit to eat in British waters. Over here we had a Lake called Lake Erie. It was dead as the Dead Sea. Not a living thing in it!

While your industry stagnated in 19th century technology Germany and Japan built new tech, new factories and trained a new work force that accepted change, efficiency and improvement. By the 1970s the British steel and motorcycle industry was gone, unable to compete, then the automobile industry was gone, killed by mismanagement and trade union sabotage.

That is why your Vauxhall is designed by Opel, and made in Spain, then imported and branded with a British sticker that was printed in Indonesia. Nothing in it is British until you sit your British butt in the seat.

And immigration worries were not due to the influx of new and strange people. The emigration problem was referred to as the "brain drain" because the best and brightest were leaving GB at an alarming rate, headed for better futures and higher living standards in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S.

Why not to the rest of the Empire? Well that was gone. When colonies could not be fully exploited, and they certainly could not with the modern media at work, they cost more to maintain than they produced. GB could not afford to support colonies and also pay their debts.

Right now, today, as bad as you think it is, is probably better than any day you had from 1929 to 1965.

There is no "Great Depression" fully declared. There are no bombs falling from the sky. There is no watch down on the beach incase of invasion. There is no rationing of food, clothing or fuel. You can borrow money and buy a car, home or that camper van you have your eye on. You go to the toilet without leaving the house. You keep your beer in the fridge now, ending centuries of drinking warm cider. And you have the NHS and all the other safety nets society provides.

Really? Do you want to go back to 1957?