OLD people love bleating on about how the country’s gone to the dogs. But which year do they think it started?
1960: National Service ends
‘Kids today don’t know they’re born. National Service made me the man I am,’ Grandpa George says proudly. The way he tells it, he played a crucial role in the Suez Crisis. In fact, he spent his National Service selling stolen military supplies down the pub.
1979: Thatcher begins privatisation
British Aerospace was first to be sold by Thatcher, then anything that wasn’t nailed down was up for grabs. Auntie Mary, who smashed a window in the Poll Tax Riots, still rants about ‘that evil bitch Thatcher’. Weirdly, though, she doesn’t like being reminded that she bought her council house for £8,700 in 1981 and sold it for £320,000 last year.
1982: Boy George appears on Top of the Pops
Uncle Arthur has enthusiastically joined the crusade against wokeness, despite not really knowing what the word means. What he does know, though, is that this country started going downhill the moment Boy George appeared on Top of the Pops wearing makeup and he’s been furious about it ever since.
1991: Biro lids get holes
‘It’s health and safety gone mad’, says Nanna Margaret. ‘One or two kids can’t breathe and the manufacturers immediately pander to them. Why should the rest of us have to put up with holes in our pen lids because some kids try to eat them? Let them choke, I say.’
2005: Ban on hunting with hounds
What’s the world coming to when you can’t go out and kill animals for fun? At least that’s what your posh Uncle Oliver reasons. It’s all the fault of those meddling animal rights do-gooders. You’re hoping he’ll leave you some money in his will so you nod enthusiastically in agreement, despite being a vegan for ethical reasons.
2007: Ban on smoking indoors
Auntie Carole’s still bitter about the ban on smoking in public buildings, especially pubs. ‘The atmosphere’s not the same anymore,’ she moans. You don’t see much of Carole as she smokes 20 a day and her house stinks of stale smoke and ashtrays. Kind of like how pubs used to be pre-2007.
2015: No more Page 3 Girls
Your Grandfather Ted says the country’s gone to pot since The Sun stopped printing pictures of topless women. If he understood computers he’d be on Pornhub daily, but he can barely work the TV remote so he has to make do with leering at women out of his front window.
2016: Brexit vote
Your Remoaner Uncle Terry is still banging on about how the country’s gone to the dogs since Brexit and everything is now irretrievably f**ked. Sadly he’s right.
