Back to the 50's

I was trying to laugh at Gordon Brown telling us all to eat less and don't throw away so much food. As I say trying, but failing.Guido has an excellent piece on what one can only refer to as a gargantuan feast that the G8 are having over in Japan. Brown's comments rather smack of Marie Antoinette's " Let them eat cake."
Anyway, I am old enough to remember the 50's and food certainly was NOT wasted then. Everything was hoarded and reused. Some of it was certainly a continuing dearth of food since the war years, but quite a lot of it was just old fashioned good housekeeping.
And debt? Anathema. I remember my mother wanted a new Hoover, and bought it on HP about 1956. Her mother was furious with her - and all for 6 shillings a week ( that's 30p. in our profligate times.)
But the thing that sticks in my mind most was the attitude to television.
It was not a question of not being able to afford it. Oh no. It was a question of NOT having that timewaster in the house - said with a gleam of fanaticism in the eye.
What changed attitudes was the Coronation of 1953.
It suddenly became almost a patriotic duty to be able to receive what truly were historic pictures.
It was exciting too. Nowadays there is little or nothing that really excites us - we've been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, buy a bigger car, but it's all just froth and non-sense. I feel really sorry for the present generation. I daresay it's an old man's conceit, but I can't see things being as exciting and as much fun as my generation's time.
In any event, I don't think they'll have any money to do anything with anyway.
Something did excite me today, though. I bought one of those ASUS eee mini laptops. When I was a wee boy there was a fantastic programme on the TV during Children's Hour, called "Billy Bean and his funny machine." It really was amazing, too. Of course, none of it was real, but it was such fun that to this day, any gadget in our household is called a Billy Bean.
So I'm doing this on my new Billy Bean.
Har har har.