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Philippa is right about things at present. But then I think back to my school years in the 1970s.  We had no central heating at home. Ice on the inside of the single glazed windows. A coal fire in just one room with no heat in our bedrooms, barely enough water for a kids bath and only for a few hours a day,  a telephone that no-one could afford to use, electric heaters that could not be used, then a few winters of power cuts, voltage reductions and all huddled in one room. Trying to do homework by candlelight. Endless strikes closing schools and buses and tubes working to rule for years.Very few takeaways and often cold dinners.Yet we would not have been described as impoverished or deprived. It was the same for almost everyone.And our parents generation had already had over a decade of rationing and real austerity.Health care was good albeit less advanced and wide ranging.School dinners and milk was the norm.The gap between the better off and the less well off was narrower.Schools looked after everyone very well with far less resources than now. Help was always there in a discreet and real way.But despite all this disruption and we all came through fine. People whinged and moaned but somehow found a way through collectively.I can't say I was scarred by this, nor anyone I've known since then has ever expressed a regret about going without or how crappy it was.But the fact now when we have far more resources and even the poorest homes  are supposed to have minimal conditions way above the standards of most homes of just 50 years ago.It really ought not to even be possible to happen.

Raymond Havelock ● 1550d