2 x 20 second videos

overloaded sockets and smoking at work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_w8XhUgyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4fRakGPnME

yes both happened the socket situation was a massive fire hazard and the sexual harassment was something you had to learn to deal with from round about age 12.

neither were particularly funny.

The good old days

It was particularly worse when you would have to walk 8 miles to school (in the snow) only to be sexually harassed by Mr Williamson the sports teacher, then escape as overloaded sockets caused the building to catch fire, then walk 8 miles (in the snow) back home. And then you were sent down the mines!

The Road Safety Seat-Belt and Train Commercials are very scary.

Jimmy Savile did them.

You forgot the bread and dripping, tripe and cow heel that we all had for breakfast.

A radio commercial warning against connecting too many appliances to one socket has been running in the past few months. I've heard it many times on LBC.

The electrics was caused due to the poor supply of sockets to each room due to the cost of the cable post war (why we use a ring system and virtually no one else does)

One double and a single was common in bedrooms and perhaps a couple of doubles in the living room and a few more in the kitchen and thats before the use of the lighting circuit for running irons etc (why its only 6A today).

The use of wire fuses which quite often got replaced by something thicker so they didn't blow and disconnecting earths to stop trips and a service fuse that could easily handle a 150-200 amp load for a while (same as today) its hardly surprising that there was such problems.

it`s still a common cause of house fires, sadly.

there`s a socket overload calculator here:


http://www.london-fire.gov.uk/overlo...al-sockets.asp

Just glancing at the multi-sockets around the house!

Smoking at work was still happening in 1990 where i worked.

I can remember at work in the 70s having sometimes quite graphic pictures of naked women hanging on the walls. You just learnt to ignore it, difficult as it was, especially as I was only a teenager.

I used to work with a bloke who used to always 'squeeze' past me, pressing himself up against me, even though there was ample room to get past without touching me. It wasn't just me though, he did it to all the females.

As for smoking in the workplace, that went on where I work up until the 80s and then they provided a 'smoking room', which was disgusting, as you can imagine.

Times have changed almost beyond recognition as regards some of the things we used to have to put up with. You youngsters just wouldn't believe the stories I could tell!

An example of multi-socket usage by a typical 1970's family ...

https://images-02.delcampe-static.ne...80_002.jpg?v=0

Very true but it wasn't just us women putting up with things men didn't have it so good either I can remember a young lad of 16 started working in our factory and the older "ladies" stripped him naked and chased him round the factory. This was quite normal but would not be allowed now.

Perhaps one of the great ironies of the time, Savile warning about dangers to kids.

You could go into the doctor's surgery and he would puff away at a cigarette while you talked. In my school, when the janitor was getting classrooms ready for parents' night, he always laid out ashtrays on the teacher's desks.
That was in the 1980s.

we had a biology teacher who used to start the lesson by telling us to open the window and have a smoke.

he ran off with a pupil.

they might have been at danger of death and being groped shitless but te music, fashion and art was fantastic

what did the Swiss produce, the cuckoo clock ?

Where I was, I remember one bloke in particular who was the classic chain-smoker, only using a match to light his first ciggie of the day. We had office doors with a small glass panel (about 2' high by 6", something like that). The story was that this reduced visibility so much that you knew he was in because you couldn't see him from the window.

That was an exaggeration. But only a tiny one.

On the plus side, if I'd been out and about, I'd always know if he'd stopped by to look for me while I was out.

I've seen one that had a 3 inch 2mm nail used as a fuse. I reckon it would have let 100amps through!

I also recall connectors being available to convert your centre light into a socket. My Mum had one and plugged her iron into it!

Nowadays, I won't even use a power tool unless it's powered through an RCD.

I understand it was not unheard of for people to have no plug on their appliances, they would just connect the wires to the pins without a protective casing.

or shove the bare wires straight in the socket and hold them in with matchsticks.

There were so few sockets in any house and very few people could afford to add more.
Remember these plugs which plugged into light fittings?
Irons, hairdryers, anything and all more than a tad dangerous. The smell of smoldering plastic and electric shocks were very familiar. We used to stick bare wires into a socket and use whatever did have a plug nearest to it to hold them in.
Apart from in Church, I can't think of anywhere else where smoking wasn't permitted.

Plugs never came with the device so you had to splash out for one and quite a few people were pretty skint so they'd make do, remember my grandad having one plug and moving it around the house depending on what room it was needed etc.

Wow, just wow.