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I know I shouldn't get political, but I can't help thinking there's a mood among some in Britain that wants us to go back to the way things were in 1950 as shown in those films posted by PrPr - and I've a horrible feeling we're heading more in the direction of Korea in 1950 :(
Let’s see a brighter side... I bet the air was much better back then. And if we go back we won’t have to wear a mask! :p
That brought back some memories. Thanks.
Oh, I remember you were here shortly after that period. :)
 
. I bet the air was much better back then.
The 1952 Great London Smog. (Smoke+fog)

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Burning torches were used to try to disperse enough fog so they could be seen.

It wasn't just London, I remember a journey through Oxford with my father hanging his head out of the side window to be guided by the white lines, and burning flares at road intersections to make them more visible.
 
Smog can be equally lethal, some of these episodes cost thousands of lives. Acute, concentrated pollution has been vastly reduced since the 1950s though nowadays we have a much bigger problem with low-level, dispersed, all-pervasive pollution.
Yes, I know, that was only meant ironically. When I went to work in Jena at the end of the seventies, on some days you could see a huge smog bell over the city. Since Jena is in a valley basin, the dirt couldn't get out of the air.
 
Yes, I know, that was only meant ironically. When I went to work in Jena at the end of the seventies, on some days you could see a huge smog bell over the city. Since Jena is in a valley basin, the dirt couldn't get out of the air.
Los Angeles also has the reputation of being covered by smog bells, due to the dense traffic.

Around 1990, a calculation has been made that, to 'break' one such a smog bell, allowing the pollution to disperse, it would require an engine that consumed an amount of energy equal to all the fossil fuel resources already used, plus all (then) known available fossil fuel resources. Just for solving one event of a smog bell!
 
I know I shouldn't get political, but I can't help thinking there's a mood among some in Britain that wants us to go back to the way things were in 1950 as shown in those films posted by PrPr - and I've a horrible feeling we're heading more in the direction of Korea in 1950 :(
I think you read too much into this videos. I like them not for a belief in them being better, but fascinating as a partial stimulus to memory and the process of change.
This one is not British, though Commonwealth.

 
Yes, I think I spotted a spot of bomb-site in a shot near St Paul's, with a rich growth of colourful weeds.
I can't believe that London even in 1950 was so exclusively white and middle-class-looking as that film shows it,
certainly the East End and Docklands were far more cosmopolitan, and had been for centuries.
How's this for diversity?
 
How's this for diversity?

That's more like it! :enamorado: And of course in 1955, the meaning of the title wasn't what it is now, at least not in the 'official', straight world - though I'd guess whoever gave it that title was well aware it already had a double entendre.
 
It wasn't just London, I remember a journey through Oxford with my father hanging his head out of the side window to be guided by the white lines,
I confess to journeys through Oxford with my head hanging out of the window, but that wasn't because of smog :p
 
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Yes, I think I spotted a spot of bomb-site in a shot near St Paul's, with a rich growth of colourful weeds.
I can't believe that London even in 1950 was so exclusively white and middle-class-looking as that film shows it,
certainly the East End and Docklands were far more cosmopolitan, and had been for centuries.
There were of course some Commonwealth students in the University towns and cities ,but "serious" immigration only really started in 1948 with the influx from the Caribbean, the "Windrush" generation, followed by the Pakistanis and the the Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. Prior to this ,unless he lived in a Seaport, or had served in the Military, the average Briton would have probably never have met a non white person.
The only other instances were when there were Coloured GIs stationed here during the war, and they were usually segregated in remote and carefully selected areas.
As for the middle class aspect, that was part of the agenda of the establishment of the day, and unreconstructed bomb sites were still commonplace in 1950.
 
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