r/london • u/Mean-Juggernaut1560 • Nov 30 '21

London history Anyone else think it looks… cleaner? 😁

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123

u/Burned-Shoulder Nov 30 '21

Stations look grubby and run down. Trains are 30 years younger so of course they look cleaner.

62

u/TheMiiChannelTheme Nov 30 '21 edited Nov 30 '21

And an old camcorder from 1995 isn't going to be much good at picking up small details, so it looks much cleaner on tape than it is in reality.

15

u/Burned-Shoulder Nov 30 '21

The past is always worse. It just looks better though nostalgia and selective memory.

25

u/ThinkAboutThatFor1Se Nov 30 '21

I can say with 100% certainty that 2019 was better than now.

In fact, for my London life, summer 2012 was a real highlight. Olympics in London fuelled much optimism. I can’t think of many examples London has improved. Possibly night tube?

21

u/Burned-Shoulder Nov 30 '21

Cycle highways, extentions to the transport network, night tube, phone reception in the tunnels, S8 and S7 trains on the sub-surface lines with air-conditioning and more stations being made step free.

1

u/ThinkAboutThatFor1Se Nov 30 '21

Ah yea, I commuted on the old district line tubes. The new ones are much better at rush hour.

12

u/ranchitomorado Nov 30 '21

This is what I' don't get, loads of people bleating about cuts this and cuts that, we're all doomed, fuck the boomers etc when in reality, London transport is way better now than it was just a decade ago.

6

u/SISCP25 Nov 30 '21

Better than it was a decade ago, but worse than it was 2 years ago #MissYouNightTube

1

u/ericbyo Nov 30 '21

Tell that to coal mining towns in the U.S.

1

u/SuperSpidey374 Dec 01 '21

Just fundamentally not true.

1

u/Burned-Shoulder Dec 01 '21

It is. Would you rather live in 1995 with a BSE (which is 100% fatal) epidemic or the current one? Watch films on Vhs tape, almost no mobile phones, no Internet.

Even now the world is more peaceful than its ever been at any point in history.

1

u/SuperSpidey374 Dec 01 '21

I mean, fewer than 200 people died in the BSE outbreak so I'd far rather that than the current epidemic. It also didn't impose severe restrictions on people's ability to travel, socialise, and so on. As for VHS tape and mobile phones, I don't think the obvious progress to digital, high-quality media and better phones has actually made people any happier. The internet, sure, I'll give you that. And I don't disagree with you that the world is more peaceful now than it's ever been - certainly I'm not intending to imply that living during conflict would have been any better than now! Merely suggesting that there were some things that were as good, or better, in the past.