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I believe location of driving is important. A few minor collisions would be more likely in urban driving but the serious incidents tend to be on main roads, especially single carriageway. My driving as a young man was mainly single carriageway A roads

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My sister's house in Hammersmith in 1988 was 4 x the value of my similar terraced house. The last time I looked it was 12 x the asking price. My 1988 job is now likely to be in London

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I guess it's the reverse of what has happened here. The graduate entry level jobs have gone or have failed to keep up with inflation. Local jobs are either high level specialist usually public sector or just over minimum wage

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I'd assume vandalised or robbed if not both. I would have a very long wait if I had a takeaway delivered. My sons did that once and found that a 2 hour wait for delivery wasn't a rumour

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The high insurance premiums often reflects a lack of a driving record. By the age of 25 insurance companies can often see whether the driver is a complete menace or not

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I'd say a lot of serious accidents involving young people (especially male) involve illegal driving (no licence etc) and they are a tiny percentage but of course everyone notices them. Then of more typical young drivers life just sees them on the road more than when they are older

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As a young man, under 24, I did a lot more driving than I have since. Some of that was social and a lot more of it was commuting. My commute was a 60 mile round trip so I moved house to reduce it to 20. My social driving reduced when my wife to be moved in with me. Probably a typical situation

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Our sons got independence by having a bus pass and then have moved to university. Our oldest son learnt to drive upon leaving university and lives within the M25

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Car dependency for young people is often a result of a parental choice. Yes, you can get a bigger house with a garden in a far flung suburb for a lower price than a smaller city centre house but you will live a long way from facilities. We live in a rural area but have a good bus service

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It looks like their ancestors over the past 100 years have been acceptable and given that the account is based in UK I'm going for a UK based ancestor. Serial killer John Owen or controversial figure like Lord Haig perhaps. Maybe they've identified the real Jack the Ripper

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It probably depends when you get together. We were young when we met and married in our mid 20s

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Possibly in some countries. In fact I remember a case of a man being prosecuted because his wife was having an affair. All 3 people were charged

Probably the biggest annoyance about 80s programmes is the failure to understand national differences. We did not look like Americans in the 80s, it was probably the era when USA and UK had the greatest difference in popular cultures. Even a trip to France would show a third popular culture

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 19h

Music? Very much a generational divide. Punk killed the popularity of a lot of the early 70s music but the mod scene saw a revival of mid 60s music among younger people. New genres would take hold within weeks in the 80s, New Romantic, Goth, Hip Hop, House, Madchester all came from nowhere overnight

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But fashions did change rapidly at the time. For men, hair was getting shorter and trouser legs much narrower from 1975 onwards and had completely changed by 1981, facial hair had also disappeared from any man under the age of 30. Women also had much shorter hair. Cars? Yes I drove a 1972 Escort

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Maybe social housing is the answer as long as they remain in public ownership

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

We need more starter homes (flats, 2 bedroom properties etc) but the profit is in those 6 bedroom houses that keep springing up. Ideally they would be a multiple of say 4 times minimum wage (single for flat, joint for house) but they would cost more to build than the selling price

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I had to look it up, apparently in some places, not only do people have takeaways delivered (rather than going to the takeaway and literally taking food away) but they get delivered by robots. It looks like trouble brewing to me

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It's pretty much all we wore in the 80s, after the technicolour 70s, monochrome was the only way

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Levels of badly informed. Top - QAnon types, next Fox/GB News/Mail/Express. Ironically those are the people who criticise others for listening MSM but they mean CNN/BBC who are probably 3rd level

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Is that in a particularly popular part of the country? Our first house in 1988 was 5 x a graduate salary and today is 5 x a minimum wage salary. House price inflation is very uneven across the country

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I worked out that if the house I bought in 1988 increased in line with the salary of the job I had when I bought it would cost £200,000. It sold last year for £125,000. That probably reflects the trebling of prices between 1982 and 1988. In fact they had doubled between 1975 and 1982

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

If prices fall then so will supply. We saw that in the early 90s. Then again demand fell because people no longer saw houses as an investment. We're pretty much at the price/wage multiple we saw in 1989 so it could happen

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It is crazy to see the difference in short distances. For example Beccles is far more Anti EU than anywhere in South Norfolk

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I've responded but possibly two issues. I suspect people who support EU membership will be more likely to respond and South Norfolk actually bucked the trend in 2016, although Leave had a majority it was less than the national majority. We were probably the most pro EU of Tory seats in 2016

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

However, in the recent local elections. I did notice a lot of people turning up to vote who didn't seem to know the process or even where to go so it's possible that Leave were just very successful in bringing out their vote in 2016 and by extension in the locals in May 2026

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I spent a lot of time arguing that Voter Id was a pointless change because of the difficulty in actually identifying and impersonating enough voters at a local level but it dawned on me that it was possible in a national referendum.

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I can understand that people living in a very safe seat wouldn't vote in a GE but did in the referendum. It's just that we know Leave had identified habitual non voters and then when in power introduced Voter Id. It just raised my suspicions

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

True but in 2016 we still had a law that meant long term emigrants (like my sister) couldn't vote in UK elections. Not sure how long the absence had to be, my sister left in 1989, voted in 1992 and in 2024 but couldn't vote in the EU referendum

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I've seen pictures of a Bullingdon Club uniform and it was what this man was wearing. Such a detestable man I can still remember him vividly to this day even though for 30 years he was just some random posh bloke dressed like a clown

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

In 1990, on honeymoon, we treated ourselves to a meal at a very famous, expensive place. The group on the next table were loud, arrogant and very posh. Their leader was this 20 something blond man, chain smoking with a ridiculous bright blue uniform. 30 years later I realised it was probably Johnson

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The point about how ridiculous it is to blame Ukraine for the spike in oil prices is important and overlooked by the media despite it being obvious what caused the increase in prices. Trump effectively made Russian oil more valuable by bombing Iran...again

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

A nationwide referendum gave more scope than other elections. The less cynical side of me suggests that if there was voter fraud it would still have been likely to be found out and the local elections in May did suggest that Farage & co are just good at getting their voters to vote

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

What would happen to the mysterious 3m extra voters who voted in the referendum but didn't vote in General Elections? The cynical part of me wonders whether the new laws regarding Voter ID were introduced by the winners of the EU referendum because they knew how to impersonate registered voters

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Yes I had that concern last season but the upturn in form took my eye off that. They need to appoint someone they trust who knows how to run a football club. MA admits he knows business but not football so really should appoint someone on the Board who knows football

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It wasn't judgement it was a realisation that we needed to do better in the next match. We can pull it round but we have to do so by the end of November. 9 winnable matches there

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I should have added the Millwall match as a 4th poor match. The fact that today's match isn't in the bottom half says a lot

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Too many fans seemed to shrug off the West Brom match.

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John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I was concerned after the West Brom game but I seemed alone in having concerns. Today was a lot way from being the worst of the season. The two home defeats and the toothless match at Stoke were the worst

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

The decline started in the close season before our last PL season. Our wealthy foreign owner wasn't really involved at that stage. We went on to waste the parachute years. Having a wealthy owner only really makes a big difference in the PL

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

But when you listen to them, are you hearing what I hear? That might make a difference

John Holland @johnhollandoaktree.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I noticed the change in use in football, where it originally meant an adequate but not very skillful player (a water carrier is another term) but incorrectly became a player who never stayed long at a club. This is the first time I've seen it used in that sense outside of football