Pedal cars and ride on toys

[Arran]

I was at primary school at the time of the Dunblane massacre, so they upped security afterwards including restricting kids from leaving the premises at lunch time.

[Arran]

Very elite. My primary school did not allow kids to leave the premises at lunch time unless there were exceptional reasons....

[Arran]

Modern day Christmas owes more to Santa than to Jesus. It really is possible to have Christmas without Jesus.

https://youtu.be/tEIKvJQxxvI

The Easter bunny doesn't have anywhere near the same level of presence or pervasiveness as Santa does - in Britain at least. Every kid...

[Arran]

Are free school meals a sign of being working class or a sign of being poor?

[Arran]

My mother used to think that NHS glasses for children were a bit naff back in the 1970s and 80s. The limited number of styles available were not attractive and they had not been updated since the 1940s. This was interpreted as how rigid and conservative the NHS really was, and their failure to adapt...

[Arran]

The Easter bunny delivering chocolate eggs is folklore in Protestant countries. The folklore in Catholic countries is that flying church bells deliver chocolate eggs.

[Arran]

Easter (Sunday) is actually the celebration of the rebirth of Jesus.

I'm not confident that the religious aspects of Christmas and Easter have any impact on modern day British people who, by and large, are not very religious and highly consumerist. Even most hardline atheists celebrate...

[Arran]

Was the popularity of NHS glasses more a result of large numbers of people wanting something in return for the taxes that they had paid as opposed to genuinely being unable to pay for them without incurring financial hardship?

When my mother was at secondary school back in the early 1980s...

[Arran]

Black Friday appeared almost out of nowhere, so it does appear a bit weird that retailers haven't capitalised on Easter to sell more toys and other consumer goods - with the possible exception of things for the garden.

As much as I deplore rampant consumerism at Christmas, I wouldn't mind...

[Arran]

Do you think that celebrities wearing NHS glasses increased their popularity with the British public? Was there any correlation between NHS glasses for children and social class?

NHS glasses ceased some time in 1986 and were replaced by a voucher for privately manufactured frames. It resulted...

[Arran]

Another difference between Christmas and Easter is that people don't pig out on food at Easter like they do at Christmas. There isn't even any specific Easter food apart from hot cross buns and a few cakes and biscuits with bunnies and chicks on them sold in supermarkets. You don't find many people...

[Arran]

I had no knowledge of this picture until I read the OP, although my mother is vaguely aware of some fuss surrounding it back in the 1980s.

Was there any particular reason for it's popularity in British living rooms back in the 1980s considering it was already around 30 years old then? Is...

[Arran]

I have wondered why, in recent decades, Easter hasn't become commercialised in a similar way to Christmas with parents buying toys etc. for their kids. All that is sold are chocolate products and a bit of cheap tat.

A (now closed down) local bike shop used to do promotions to encourage...

[Arran]

Why the Dickens is Easter celebrated less than Christmas?

https://religionnews.com/2015/04/02/...ess-christmas/


Why Easter never became a big secular holiday like Christmas

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/29/171688...-easter-celebr...

[Arran]

Unfortunately, the manual vs non-manual jobs is no longer a reliable demarcation line. As I previously stated, tradesmen are making tons of money these days despite their jobs being manual, whilst a new working class with low skilled low paid jobs has emerged in the service sector.

[Arran]

Tradesmen are making tons of money these days. Plumbers and electricians are known to earn as much as £50k a year, and even plasterers can easily earn over £30k.

On the other hand, most service sector jobs pay lousy salaries....

[Arran]

I mentioned in the discussion “things that kids don't have anymore” that pedal cars and other (plastic) ride on toys regularly feature in photos of young children (and some even as old as 5 or 6) playing out in the street or in parks from the 1970s to the early 1980s. They are far less common...

[Arran]

Did you have NHS glasses because your parents genuinely couldn't afford decent looking glasses, or because they were too stingy to buy decent looking glasses, or because they wanted something in return for the taxes that they had paid?...

[Arran]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the topic of social class, especially matters relating to trade unions and the changes in the economy over the decades from #22, and home ownership from #25.

[Arran]

I was thinking more along the lines of CBBC and CITV on weekday afternoons, and Saturday morning kids TV.