[thechat] #uksnow

John Handelaar john at handelaar.org
Thu Dec 2 10:50:16 CST 2010


On 2 December 2010 15:01, Luther, Ron <Ron.Luther at hp.com> wrote:
> OLD Fred Jones noted:
>
>>>Other members think '64 is so far back they aren't sure if there was
>>>even electricity then. lol.
>
> Oh, they might believe the 'lectricity.

I once knew some people who lived 15 miles from the border up in
Cumbria.  They didn't get electricity until the M6 reached Carlisle.
1968.

> Color tellys were _available_ ... but not everybody had one in '64.

The UK didn't have anything on TV in colour until BBC2 came on air in
'67 (and those folks in Cumbria couldn't see it anyway for the first
year).

Now... Ireland...

Colour kit arrived at RTE in 1969, apparently, but you'd never know.
The Eurovision in 1971 was RTE's first-ever live colour OB for the
rest of Europe, but RTE itself shoved it out in black and white. The
news was still going out in b&w in the late 70s.  Its *second* TV
channel *EVER* went live in 1978.

That haunted look of acceptance you're seeing on the news from most
people in Ireland at the moment was trained into them in decades of
living like something on the wrong side of the iron curtain.
Yugoslavia, maybe, without the weather but with the same
government-issued voice of information on the sole TV channel
available.  And some people with huge aerials made out of curtain wire
spun around the back yard so they can get a grainy picture from the
UK.

jh


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