Changes for the worse that have happened in my lifetime

[screenman]

Good old British companies that many want to go back to, who went bust.

 

[NorthernDave]

Why did that happen?
How much beer/alcohol was in it?
I don't remember feeling remotely drunk on it as a young kid.

Apparently it was owned by Beecham's (the pharmaceutical company), who sold it to Britvic along with the UK Pepsi and 7up franchises. The brand was the allowed to quietly decline before being withdrawn completely in the mid 90s

Hard disagree, for reasons I shall hide behind a spoiler to avoid thread derailment.
The Shuttle program was *catastrophically* bad.

Spoiler: Extensive Shuttlesplaining

It set space exploration back by at least 35 years, more if you include the R&D time.
It looked iconic but it was a failure in pretty much every category one chooses to examine it.

It was emphatically not a technological marvel or the pinnacle of technology - it was a massive backwards step, a 122-foot white elephant, a perfect monument to hubris.
Indeed, the only marvellous thing about it was that it was so unbalanced that it required incredible engineering to make the damn thing fly at all.

Project brief: a cheap, reusable launch vehicle that could take large payloads into LEO with a landing/launch turnaround in a week.
Reality: hideously expensive, very dangerous (even by spaceflight standards) riddled with engineering problems that did not affect conventional launch vehicles, that took at least 2-3 months to refit after a single mission, with additional massive delays when the heatshield tiles needed replacing every few missions, or when the entire fleet was grounded for years after the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

The Shuttle was originally intended to be just one part of a much larger program called the Space Transportation System (STS) that was intended to bring large payloads to the Moon and Mars with a view to making missions there much easier, faster, cheaper and safer.

Nixon came along and nixed most of the program, leaving them with what we came to know as the Shuttle and its vestigial STS designation, leaving the entire program looking rather pointless.

Now onto stats:
- It cost $450 million for a single launch, which is ~8-10 times more than a conventional rocket launching similar payloads (and ~50-70 times more than was originally claimed for the project)
- 2 of the Shuttles failed catastrophically, representing 40% of the space-rated Shuttles and 1.54% of all Shuttle launches.

Running the Shuttle program was so expensive that it caused NASA to be run into the ground, to the point where the organisation that safely sent humans to the moon and back six times haven't had the capability to launch any manned vehicles in the 9 years since the program was shut down.

Concorde was a pretty cool rich kids' toy tho, I'm slightly sad it was mothballed because unlike the Shuttle, Concorde wasn't being relied on to drive space exploration forwards.

I did not know that. Although it could be argued that made it an even greater engineering achievement that it flew at all...
I just thought it looked amazing when I watched the TV coverage of the first mission. Besides, anything used by James Bond and Buck Rogers must be a good thing.

Anyway, here's another one:

Cadbury - the politically motivated sale to the American cheese makers, pushed through by David Cameron against the wishes of the incumbent board as a vehicle to get a load of fees for a near bankrupt RBS. The company may still exist, but the chocolate isn't as good as it used to be and the principles it was built on have been abandoned.

 

[Gunk]

the Concorde was a pretty cool rich kids' toy tho, I'm slightly sad it was mothballed because unlike the Shuttle, Concorde wasn't being relied on to drive space exploration forwards.

Concorde was absolutely beautiful, I’ve been utterly obsessed with it my whole life.

 

[Drago]

I am never going to agree on anything smoking related as I consider it horrible to say the least.

So do I, can't abide it. But I also can't abide the nanny state.

If consenting adults want to smoke in enclosed premises, and only staff who themselves smoke are employed to work there, who am I (or you) to impose my will upon them? So long as everything is up front and staff know the crack before they apply, and no one who doesn't want to be affected is affected, it's none of our business.

You and I can still enjoy a pint of Scruttocks Olde Shagnasty at the smoke free pub of our choice, and we can even drive our 4 wheeled air pollution conveyances to get there just to show how hypocritical some people can be - let he does does not pollute the air themselves cast the first lump of coal.

 

[raleighnut]

The ban was essentially made on health and safety grounds wrt staff working in the pubs.

If you want to kill yourself, do it at home. Don't expect others to kill themselves serving you beer.

In many pubs I know the Publican and all the staff smoke too, they're outside with the rest of us.

 

[Gunk]

I do miss a fag, I gave up my 30 a day habit 25 years ago and still miss it!

 

[Drago]

I quit many years ago. I did miss it for some years but now it holds no interest or attraction for me. But I drive a car which creates pollution, which itself accounts for 20,000-40,000 annual deaths in the UK (not me personally, traffic pollution in general) so I don't get preachy about smoking.

 

[PK99]

In many pubs I know the Publican and all the staff smoke too, they're outside with the rest of us.

Safety legislation does not work like that.

In the workplace, the rules apply.

 

[Illaveago]

Venture capitalists who buy companies by using the company's money to fund it and then landing them in debt .

 

[Illaveago]

Fly tipping !

 

[derrick]

Maggie Thatcher,

 

[roley poley]

Hitching .There were queues at the start of the M1 in leeds when I went past on my way to work and I did plenty of it in my youth to climb in the Lake district myself .

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Norfolk

 

[Chris S]

Daewoos being rebranded as Chevrolets.

 

[Chris S]

The end of the Nissan Micra. The modern ones are just Renaults in drag.