[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Tinseltoes

and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

oh well well done, the feeling of self-worth over those fools who do go out and get tested must be so fulfilling.

We rode in cars without seat belts or air bags.

well doesn't that just eradicate that safety feature. Nope. Soz car manufacturers, redesign everything, apparently some people didn't die and this is the case for everyone now xo

Even though all shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday - we managed not to starve to death!

-isn't sure how this is relevant, since...we're still managing not to...-

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with loads of sugar in, but we weren't overweight because..........WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

fair point.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. AND WE WERE O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played by the river beds. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, Xboxes, no 999 channels on Sky, no DVD's, no mobile phones, no internet or internet chat rooms WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! (and old Rovers, Austin 7's, Morris 10's - some lucky bastard even had a Rolls Royce!)

I resent the implicaton I've bolded. Is your view of youth today so distorted as to assume children tune in, turn on, drop out 24/7? The majority of friendships are formed at school and always will be...

As for the treehouses/river beds stories, oh please, save it for an Enid Blyton novel.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits! We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays.

Lawsuits point I accept. The suing culture is horrible. But air guns...

Not everyone made the football/rugby/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT.

I imagine this is a dig at the much-exaggerated "we can't have a sack race because the kids feel bad about losing" spiel. The reason these stories find media attention is because they're so alien - and rare. I've never had experiences like that - I took part in sports day, I lost some, I won some, I grew up fine.

Our parents would TELL us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road....
They didn't invent stupid names for us like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla' and 'Tiger'

...what? -has never heard of these names-

If you are one of these people CONGRATULATIONS! You were lucky to grow up as a kid before the lawyers and government regulated our lives for good.

TELL YOUR KIDS HOW BRAVE YOU ARE!!!!!!!!!

I like the way you've accidentally worded that to prove my point. "regulated our lives for good" - you can say what you like about this so-called Nanny State, but it's exaggerated. A lot of this post is just smug self-worth and delusion - what on Earth is the problem with the invention of airbags and not using airguns? Are you trying to appear 'hard'? Because it just makes you look like a whinging old nostalgic reminiscing about the 'good old days'.

You're not brave. You're typical of your time and you don't like change. [this isn't necessarily aimed at you personally, but the author of the post per se]