Fascinating insight into your first hand experience @Dachs. I’m shocked, though, that there are still such differences as pay and pensions, and don’t understand how your central government can allow this to be the case. I would have thought 30 years was long enough to iron all these differences out.
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@Bathsheba , especially as Mutty Merkel is an East German and
was in charge for so long ??
I suspect that the disparity in pay was retained in order to
keep a ready supply of cheap labour to fuel the west’s
powerful industries ??
Donkeyman! 
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I grieve the days gone by, as the days and weeks go by I feel sadder for what once was.
Sure life was tough back then but my Dad says he would give anything to have those days back even the struggles. As poor as we were we were happy.
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I was happy when my children were small .
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Being 76 years old these changes were a big thing in my life at the time
From my point of view, the microwave oven has made a big difference to a swift milk based breakfast. Before, it involved a saucepan to heat the milk, but now I can nuke my chosen cereal in seconds and I’m only left the bowl and spoon to deal with after I’ve eaten. As time marched on, many more uses have been found for it and with the event of the combination oven, the larger Sharp 42L job is my preferred cooking appliance.
Gosh, I could have written that too. Absolutely agree, though I think my microwave is smaller than 42L I definitely would get another with convection facilities too (it also has a grill but I have never used that)
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Over here wages are not fixed by the central government but by management and labour. All politicians can do is to call on them to renegotiate wages and salaries. Those differences in pay and pension in various lines of business have been a constant reason for dissatisfaction in the east since the pay gap is anachronistic and we are not talking about peanuts. In some sectors (e.g. banking, insurance) there’s no pay gap any more while in others it can be as high as 990€ / 840 pounds per month.
The reasons are that larger companies that can offer higher wages are more often based in the west. @Donkeyman Human beings can’t be moved around like chess pieces even if what you say may have been a hidden strategy. Unfortunately, the reasons are to a large extent home-grown. The east made the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, by being against trade unions that were regarded as remains of the old system that had just been overthrown. As a consequence, there was virtually no collective bargaining agreement like in the west which enabled employers to offer the wages they thought were appropriate. As a result, employees tended to accept lower regional wages, too. Now it’s difficult to get out of this vicious circle.
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Well, to be fair, our 42L is our largest and is a combi oven. We do have 2 smaller standard microwaves … a 25L for general use and the much smaller 17L just for nuking breakfasts and warming drinks. The small 17L types are so cheap now (around £40) having one just for breakfast leaves the other two for general cooking as required.
They came to empty the meters in our house. My parents had “coin-in-the-slot” meters until after I left home in 1971.
Oh God, I remember those days which is why my teeth are in such a dreadful state these days. Slow, treadle-driven drills to get the bulk of decay out; then a high-speed (still slow by today’s standards) electric motor driven drill to do the fine work. All fillings were amalgam, and “gold” crowns with no choice at all.
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@Dachs," Humans can’t be moved around like chess prices"
Then how come Europe is flooded with migrants ??
They seem able to move around ok ??
On German unions, l used to work for VW in SA, and there was
an arrangement between what they called a workers committee
and the management for negotiating wages and conditions ?
That seemed to work better than the British union system imo !!
Donkeyman! 
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Central Heating & double or triple glazing
I remember as a child waking up to ice inside the windows.
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Yep. Been there!
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Me too…I remember taking photos of the beautiful patterns the frost made on the glass. Mind you this was in the north of scotland, so…things get chilly up there! 
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Donkeyman , I don’t think you can compare my example to the migration problem. They are poles apart.
To get back to my example, even if trying to retain a pay gap was a hidden objective, it wouldn’t work if employees weren’t ready to accept the lower pay structure. But they did.
You’re right about VW and other big players. Social partnership and workers’ participation is a specific feature of our work culture and it works.
Edit: I didn’t write “chess prices”. See your quote of my text. 
@Dachs,. Combination tech glitch and old age Dachs,sorry !!
Thanks for your input !!
Donkeyman! 
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Someone posted up asking whether you have a shower or a bath Thats something thats changed used to be a bath once or twice a week now its once or twice a day
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I remember as a kid,bath day was a Sunday evening.!
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You had a bath once a week?
Just as long as they don’t get Chille. 
