Britain in the 60s

[zabadak]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Peter noone is still alive but no longer part of HH.

O/T - I saws him in 1982 in New York in a production of The Pirates Of Penzance

[tex]

Re: Britain in the 60s

O/T - I saws him in 1982 in New York in a production of The Pirates Of Penzance

Sentimental friend is my fave HH song, if one of todays boybands recorded this it would be a poptastic hit

[George 1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Around half of the adult population in the 1960s didn't have a bank account. They paid their (usually weekly) wages in cash. It was common for factories to have a wage office where a security van would deliver a large amount of cash from a bank on Friday morning and clerks would spend the rest of the day stuffing notes and coins into envelopes. In the afternoon the factory workers would all queue up outside the wage office and collect their pay packets. The envelopes often had a notch in them where it was possible to count the notes without having to open it.

If a person needed to a cash a cheque but they didn't have a bank account then they would take it to their local pub and the publican would cash it for them.

The banking system really modernised itself during the course of the 1960s - Barclays introduced cheque guarantee cards in 1966, and of course cashpoints were introduced the following year - Reg Varney (he of On the Buses fame of course) was the first person to use the machine in its Enfield branch. No coincidence that as we were about to become decimal a few years later that most of these changes probably happened to suit decimalisation which was to follow. It's difficult to think nowadays that one would have almost got stranded without them prior to that if one didn't have cash on them.

And of course credit cards as well - Visa was connected to Barclays (hence Barclaycard) and the TSB, while Access was connected to Nat West, Lloyds, the Midland and other banks as well - of course it's Mastercard these days now. .

[George 1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Wage snatches were a common crime for gangs to carry out when they knew a local factory was paying bonuses to their employees.

Look at how big The Great Train Robbery was back in 1963 - a robbery of that size would be almost forgotten about in a week these days. Back then it was unpreceded - the amount stolen as well as the way it was stolen as well. And the day it happened also happened to be Ronnie Biggs' birthday as well.

[Richard1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Look at how big The Great Train Robbery was back in 1963 - a robbery of that size would be almost forgotten about in a week these days. Back then it was unpreceded - the amount stolen as well as the way it was stolen as well. And the day it happened also happened to be Ronnie Biggs' birthday as well.

It was a consignment of old notes being taken to be incinerated, & they timed the raid to be after a bank holiday when there would be a larger amount.

I doubt as much cash as they stole would be moved in one go these days.

[zip55]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Celsius was known as Centigrade when I was a kid

[Arran]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Safe breaking was big business in the 1960s whereas it has virtually died out this side of 1990. In many towns barely a week would go by without an attempted or successful breaking of a safe filled with cash.

[George 1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

I read in a Notes and Queries-alike column in the Sunday Telegraph many years ago when someone asked what the difference was between Celsius and Centigrade - I just assumed that one was a translation of the other.

[zabadak]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Safe breaking was big business in the 1960s whereas it has virtually died out this side of 1990. In many towns barely a week would go by without an attempted or successful breaking of a safe filled with cash.

Quite often a stalwart of British TV (e.g. The Sweeney)

[Richard1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Safe breaking was big business in the 1960s whereas it has virtually died out this side of 1990. In many towns barely a week would go by without an attempted or successful breaking of a safe filled with cash.

I read recently a good article on safe cracking, explaining the "war" between the makers & thieves over the years involving new tools & updated designs to thwart them.

It seemed to die down when it became more common for criminals to target security vans.

[tex]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Did your parents ever reflect on the 60s?, although i was born in 59 i was too young to remember much about the 60s culturally, i only have what i read and what i see on tv, obviously there are snippets of the decade that i recall but they are more in relation to school days,holidays and sweets. My parents never related back how it was bringing up a family of six children in the 60s and 70s or how they would spend the little leisure time they had (if any). They never spoke about the music or the fashions and i regret never asking about it. When i see programmes about the 60s i always feel i missed out on a great decade because i was simply too young to appreciate it

[Zincubus]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Did your parents ever reflect on the 60s?, although i was born in 59 i was too young to remember much about the 60s culturally, i only have what i read and what i see on tv, obviously there are snippets of the decade that i recall but they are more in relation to school days,holidays and sweets. My parents never related back how it was bringing up a family of six children in the 60s and 70s or how they would spend the little leisure time they had (if any). They never spoke about the music or the fashions and i regret never asking about it. When i see programmes about the 60s i always feel i missed out on a great decade because i was simply too young to appreciate it

There's a great film full of fab actors free on Sky
Based on a true story ..

My week with Marilyn

Filmed all over England but set in 1956 .... maybe of interest to you ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[George 1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

My parents used to collect 7 inch records from the 1960s and they had two boxes full of them - in the mid 1980s the seemed really old to me rather than playing something from the 1990s now.

I think that they had every band and singer going back then, except the Beatles, ironically enough.

[Richard1978]

Re: Britain in the 60s

My parents used to collect 7 inch records from the 1960s and they had two boxes full of them - in the mid 1980s the seemed really old to me rather than playing something from the 1990s now. I think that they had every band and singer going back then, except the Beatles, ironically enough.

Yes things from before I was born seem a lot older. I remember in the 1980s a lot of things from the 1960s seemed from another world, but the equivalent things from the late 1990s don't seem so old.

[Moonraker]

Re: Britain in the 60s

Talking about vynal records... My mother use to make televisions for Decca. I think it was in Battersea, London